Homework 8: The Hamiltonian Formalism & Poisson brackets

Prof. Miguel Mostaf a Colorado State University

(Dated: Due on Friday December 10, 2010)

1. Determine the Hamiltonian of a free particle in the cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical coordinate systems. 2. Construct the Hamiltonian and obtain the equation of motion of a simple pendulum. 3. Find the Hamiltonian of a particle moving in a potential U in a uniformly rotating frame of reference. 4. Obtain the Hamiltonian of a charged particle in an unchanging electromagnetic eld. Is it equal to the total energy[1]? Explain why. 5. A bead of mass m is threaded on a smooth circular wire of radius a. The wire is constrained to rotate in its own horizontal plane about a point O in the wire itself with constant angular velocity . Obtain the Hamiltonian of the system and the equation of motion. 6. A point of mass m is placed on a frictionless plane that is tangent to the Earths surface. Determine Hamiltons equations taking: (a) the distance x (b) the angle as the generalized coordinate. 7. Obtain the Poisson brackets between the components of p and L. 8. Show that [, Lz ] = 0, where is a spherically symmetrical function of the coordinates r and momentum p of a particle. F, where F is a vector function of the coordinates and momentum of a particle, and 9. Show that [ F, Lz ] = n is a unit vector parallel to the z-axis. (Hint: you could use the result from the previous problem.) n 10. Show from the Poisson bracket condition for conserved quantities that the LaplaceRungeLenz vector A = pL is a constant of the motion for the Kepler problem. Extra credit problems 11. A particle of mass m is constrained to move on the surface of a cylinder. The particle is subjected to a force directed towards the origin and proportional to the distance of the particle from the origin. Construct the Hamiltonian and Hamiltons equations of motion. 12. A magnetic monopole is dened (if one exists) by a magnetic eld singularity of the form B = b r /r3 , where b is a constant (a measure of the magnetic charge, as it were). Suppose a particle of mass m moves in the eld of a magnetic monopole and a central force eld derived from the potential V (r ) = k/r. Setup the magnetic monopole in Hamiltonian formulation (you may want to use spherical coordinates), and by means of the Poisson brackets, show that while the mechanical angular momentum is not conserved (the eld of force is non-central) there is a conserved vector D = L qb r . c r mkr r

[1] The quantity ( T + q) can be identied as the total energy of the system from a consideration of the path integral of the force over the path of the particle.