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/2016/s7/2/a/solution

The separability of the printed Lagrangian is important. Every is an independent oscillator of the same frequency, irrespective of mass. Define , . Then the complete constant matrix , and angular quantities , include each oscillator energy and the rotational symmetries of this mass-weighted oscillator space. Alternatively its explicitly time-dependent constants are and .
Translations in all give conserved . Translation of together gives ; is free and gives . Their center-of-mass positions minus the associated constant velocities times are boost constants. The decoupled relative motion conserves , where . In mass-weighted versions, the three free center coordinates also have conserved mutual angular momenta. These families are not all functionally independent.
The relative subsystem alone is driven through . For generic nonzero its energy, and hence the total energy, is not conserved. Omitting the mass-weighted oscillator symmetries simply because the physical masses differ would miss genuine symmetries of this particular model.

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