Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-classical-mechanics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/3/b/ii/solution

Work on , with a local choice of the periodic angle . The inverse formulas are
In particular, , , and . Their Poisson bracket is
The other fundamental Poisson brackets vanish by antisymmetry. Thus this is a canonical transformation for every , on local charts away from the origin. At the angle is undefined.
In the new coordinates the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian is
For to be a conserved quantity throughout phase space, Hamilton's equations require identically. The two coefficients must coincide. For the usual and , positivity of selects
These are harmonic oscillator action-angle variables; the action variable is .

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