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Modified Hamiltonian formalism for higher-derivative theories

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-11-21 v4 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The alternative version of Hamiltonian formalism for higher-derivative theories is proposed. As compared with the standard Ostrogradski approach it has the following advantages: (i) the Lagrangian, when expressed in terms of new variables yields proper equations of motion; no additional Lagrange multipliers are necessary (ii) the Legendre transformation can be performed in a straightforward way provided the Lagrangian is nonsingular in Ostrogradski sense. The generalization to singular Lagrangians as well as field theory are presented.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1005.3941,
  title  = {Modified Hamiltonian formalism for higher-derivative theories},
  author = {Krzysztof Andrzejewski and Joanna Gonera and Piotr Machalski and Pawel Maslanka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.3941},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

22 pages; no figures; some comments added; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

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