Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/iii/paper-16/3/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 16 3 b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The Symplectic Darboux theorem says that every point of a -dimensional symplectic manifold has local coordinates in whichFirst choose linear coordinates at the point so the form there is standard. The required symplectic basis can be constructed inductively: choose with , split off their span, and repeat on its nondegenerate symplectic orthogonal complement. Extend these coordinates to a chart centered at zero.
Let be the constant standard form in this chart and . The closed form vanishes at zero. On a small star-shaped ball the radial Poincare lemma supplies a primitiveSince , this primitive is . The interpolating forms are nondegenerate on a common smaller ball, because they all agree with at zero and ranges over a compact interval.
Apply the local version of Moser's trick: solve . The vector fields are and fix zero. On a sufficiently small ball their flows exist for and remain inside the coordinate chart; the quadratic bound makes their displacement smaller than the available margin. The same pullback calculation gives . Thus is a local symplectomorphism from the standard ball into , and its inverse supplies the desired Darboux chart. There are no local symplectic invariants beyond dimension.
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