Jacobi Multipliers in Integrability and the Inverse Problem of Mechanics

Abstract

We review the general theory of the Jacobi last multipliers in geometric terms and then apply the theory to different problems in integrability and the inverse problem for one-dimensional mechanical systems. Within this unified framework, we derive the explicit form of a Lagrangian obtained by several authors for a given dynamical system in terms of known constants of the motion via a Jacobi multiplier for both autonomous and nonautonomous systems, and some examples are used to illustrate the general theory. Finally, some geometric results on Jacobi multipliers and their use in the study of Hojman symmetry are given.

Keywords

• Jacobi multipliers
• inverse problem
• nonstandard Lagrangians
• integrability