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Concept
Canonical transformation
Summary
In Hamiltonian mechanics, a canonical transformation is a change of canonical coordinates (q, p, t) → (Q, P, t) that preserves the form of Hamilton's equations. This is sometimes known as form invariance. It need not preserve the form of the Hamiltonian itself. Canonical transformations are useful in their own right, and also form the basis for the Hamilton–Jacobi equations (a useful method for calculating conserved quantities) and Liouville's theorem (itself the basis for classical statistical mechanics).
Since Lagrangian mechanics is based on generalized coordinates, transformations of the coordinates q → Q do not affect the form of Lagrange's equations and, hence, do not affect the form of Hamilton's equations if we simultaneously change the momentum by a Legendre transformation into
Therefore, coordinate transformations (also called point transformations) are a type of canonical transformation. However, the class of canonical transformations is much broader, since the old generalized coordinates, momenta and even time may be combined to form the new generalized coordinates and momenta. Canonical transformations that do not include the time explicitly are called restricted canonical transformations (many textbooks consider only this type).
For clarity, we restrict the presentation here to calculus and classical mechanics. Readers familiar with more advanced mathematics such as cotangent bundles, exterior derivatives and symplectic manifolds should read the related symplectomorphism article. (Canonical transformations are a special case of a symplectomorphism.) However, a brief introduction to the modern mathematical description is included at the end of this article.
Boldface variables such as q represent a list of N generalized coordinates that need not transform like a vector under rotation, e.g.,
A dot over a variable or list signifies the time derivative, e.g.,
The dot product notation between two lists of the same number of coordinates is a shorthand for the sum of the products of corresponding components, e.
Official source
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