Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2012/s7/2/4/solution

The Jacobi identity and the two brackets imply
Thus without re-solving the motion. Explicitly . Squaring and adding the two rotated components gives
Consequently the four quantities are not functionally independent: generically there are three independent constants. One may choose, locally, and the orientation encoded by ; their magnitude is fixed by the displayed relation. This also matches the maximum of three independent trajectory-labeling constants for a nonstationary autonomous flow in four-dimensional phase space. On singular subsets the local functional rank can be lower: for example, at and , the differentials of are proportional to , leaving at most two independent differentials together with ; “three” is the generic count, not an assertion about every singular configuration.

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