Lectures on the Geometry of Poisson Manifolds, by Izu Vaisman, Progress in Math- Ematics, Vol
BULLETIN (New Series) OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 33, Number 2, April 1996 Lectures on the geometry of Poisson manifolds, by Izu Vaisman, Progress in Math- ematics, vol. 118, Birkh¨auser, Basel and Boston, 1994, vi + 205 pp., $59.00, ISBN 3-7643-5016-4 For a symplectic manifold M, an important construct is the Poisson bracket, which is defined on the space of all smooth functions and satisfies the following properties: 1. f,g is bilinear with respect to f and g, 2. {f,g} = g,f (skew-symmetry), 3. {h, fg} =−{h, f }g + f h, g (the Leibniz rule of derivation), 4. {f, g,h} {+ g,} h, f { + }h, f,g = 0 (the Jacobi identity). { { }} { { }} { { }} The best-known Poisson bracket is perhaps the one defined on the function space of R2n by: n ∂f ∂g ∂f ∂g (1) f,g = . { } ∂q ∂p − ∂p ∂q i=1 i i i i X Poisson manifolds appear as a natural generalization of symplectic manifolds: a Poisson manifold isasmoothmanifoldwithaPoissonbracketdefinedonits function space. The first three properties of a Poisson bracket imply that in local coordinates a Poisson bracket is of the form given by n ∂f ∂g f,g = πij , { } ∂x ∂x i,j=1 i j X where πij may be seen as the components of a globally defined antisymmetric contravariant 2-tensor π on the manifold, called a Poisson tensor or a Poisson bivector field. The Jacobi identity can then be interpreted as a nonlinear first-order differential equation for π with a natural geometric meaning. The Poisson tensor # π of a Poisson manifold P induces a bundle map π : T ∗P TP in an obvious way.
[Show full text]