Lagrangian torus 2026-10-07
A Lagrangian submanifold diffeomorphic to an -dimensional flat torus in a -dimensional symplectic manifold. Compact connected regular levels of a completely integrable Hamiltonian system are examples, by the Arnold-Liouville theorem.
The Arnold-Liouville theorem concerns a connected compact component of a regular common level of commuting independent smooth functions on a -dimensional symplectic manifold. It states that is a Lagrangian torus, and that a neighbourhood of has action-angle variables
in which every depends only on . If or, more generally, , its Hamiltonian flow satisfies
Angles have period here. The theorem is local near this regular compact component; it does not assert globally defined action-angle variables across singular levels or over an entire base with monodromy.
First, has dimension of a manifold by the submersion theorem. The Hamiltonian vector fields are independent, tangent to , and commute. They span . Moreover
so is a Lagrangian submanifold. Compactness makes these restricted vector fields complete. Their joint flow is an -action on . Its orbits are open because the fields span , so connectedness gives one orbit. The stabilizer of a point is discrete by the inverse function theorem, and
Compactness forces to be a full-rank Euclidean lattice: otherwise an unbounded linear coordinate transverse to its span would descend to the quotient. Thus is an -torus.
Next choose a small ball of regular values near and a neighbourhood of this component which is a product family of compact tori . This local trivialization follows directly by choosing transverse vector fields with and lifting short radial paths in the base; compactness of gives a uniform neighbourhood where their flows exist. Hence deformation retracts onto . The commuting joint flows on nearby fibres have smoothly varying full-rank Hamiltonian period lattices. A basis of their periods can be chosen smoothly on this small ball: continue the return equations from a basis at the central fibre, using their nonsingular vertical flow derivatives and the implicit function theorem. No global choice of lattice basis is needed.
Because and retracts onto , its closed symplectic form is exact on . Choose a one-form with . Let be the smoothly continued cycles represented by the period basis and define the action integrals
For a transverse variation of the fibre, differentiating a cycle integral and using Cartan's magic formula eliminates the integral of the exact term. With the cycle parametrized by the joint-flow time , this gives
Thus
The period matrix is nonsingular, so gives coordinates on the base. The corresponding Hamiltonian vector fields satisfy
Their time- flows return along the basis cycles. They commute because each is a function of the commuting . Consequently they give a free torus action on .
Choose a section over the action-coordinate ball and use this torus action to define angles . Since , the symplectic form takes the form
The closed base two-form is exact on the ball: write , , by the Poincare lemma. Changing the angular origins by removes this term, since . This completes the construction of action-angle variables. The functions are constant on the fibres, so are functions of alone, and Hamilton's equations give the claimed straight-line motion. This proves both the topological and symplectic parts of the Arnold-Liouville theorem.
Liouville integrability on a -dimensional symplectic manifold means that there are functionally independent first integrals, including , whose pairwise Poisson brackets vanish. Near a compact connected regular common level set, the Arnold-Liouville theorem gives action-angle variables with , periodic modulo , , and .
For a frozen mass, the turning point is . The action variable is
Adiabatic invariance of the action holds to leading order when the mass varies slowly compared with an orbital period, away from degenerating orbits. Keeping fixed gives
For this agrees with and .
The Arnold-Liouville theorem states that if are independent commuting first integrals and a connected component of a regular common level
is compact, then is diffeomorphic to the -torus. A neighbourhood of admits action-angle variables in which
and the motion is linear on each invariant torus:
The conclusion is Arnold-Liouville theorem: a compact connected regular common level is a three-torus, and nearby action-angle coordinates make the flow linear in the angles.