Topology of energy surfaces and existence of transversal Poincar´esections Alexey Bolsinova Holger R. Dullinb Andreas Wittekb a) Department of Mechanics and Mathematics Moscow State University Moscow 119899, Russia b) Institut f¨ur Theoretische Physik Universit¨at Bremen Postfach 330440 28344 Bremen, Germany Email:
[email protected] February 1996 Abstract Two questions on the topology of compact energy surfaces of natural two degrees of freedom Hamiltonian systems in a magnetic field are discussed. We show that the topology of this 3-manifold (if it is not a unit tangent bundle) is uniquely determined by the Euler characteristic of the accessible region in arXiv:chao-dyn/9602023v1 29 Feb 1996 configuration space. In this class of 3-manifolds for most cases there does not exist a transverse and complete Poincar´esection. We show that there are topological obstacles for its existence such that only in the cases of S1 × S2 and T 3 such a Poincar´esection can exist. 1 Introduction The question of the topology of the energy surface of Hamiltonian systems was al- ready treated in the 20’s by Birkhoff and Hotelling [8, 9]. Birkhoff proposed the “streamline analogy” [3], i.e. the idea that the flow of a Hamiltonian system on the 3-manifold could be viewed as the streamlines of an incompressible fluid evolving in this manifold. Extending the work of Poincar´e[14] he noted that it might be difficult 1 to find a transverse Poincar´esection which is complete (i.e. for which every stream- line starting from the surface of section returns to it) [1].