Hamilton-Pontryagin Integrators on Lie Groups: Introduction and Structure-Preserving Properties

In this paper structure-preserving time-integrators for rigid body-type mechanical systems are derived from a discrete Hamilton-Pontryagin variational principle. From this principle one can derive a novel class of variational partitioned Runge-Kutta methods on Lie groups. Included among these integrators are generalizations of symplectic Euler and St\"{o}rmer-Verlet integrators from flat spaces to Lie groups. Because of their variational design, these integrators preserve a discrete momentum map (in the presence of symmetry) and a symplectic form. In a companion paper, we perform a numerical analysis of these methods and report on numerical experiments on the rigid body and chaotic dynamics of an underwater vehicle. The numerics reveal that these variational integrators possess structure-preserving properties that methods designed to preserve momentum (using the coadjoint action of the Lie group) and energy (for example, by projection) lack.