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Concept
Canonical coordinates
Summary
In mathematics and classical mechanics, canonical coordinates are sets of coordinates on phase space which can be used to describe a physical system at any given point in time. Canonical coordinates are used in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics. A closely related concept also appears in quantum mechanics; see the Stone–von Neumann theorem and canonical commutation relations for details.
As Hamiltonian mechanics are generalized by symplectic geometry and canonical transformations are generalized by contact transformations, so the 19th century definition of canonical coordinates in classical mechanics may be generalized to a more abstract 20th century definition of coordinates on the cotangent bundle of a manifold (the mathematical notion of phase space).
In classical mechanics, canonical coordinates are coordinates and in phase space that are used in the Hamiltonian formalism. The canonical coordinates satisfy the fundamental Poisson bracket relations:
A typical example of canonical coordinates is for to be the usual Cartesian coordinates, and to be the components of momentum. Hence in general, the coordinates are referred to as "conjugate momenta".
Canonical coordinates can be obtained from the generalized coordinates of the Lagrangian formalism by a Legendre transformation, or from another set of canonical coordinates by a canonical transformation.
Canonical coordinates are defined as a special set of coordinates on the cotangent bundle of a manifold. They are usually written as a set of or with the xs or qs denoting the coordinates on the underlying manifold and the ps denoting the conjugate momentum, which are 1-forms in the cotangent bundle at point q in the manifold.
A common definition of canonical coordinates is any set of coordinates on the cotangent bundle that allow the canonical one-form to be written in the form
up to a total differential. A change of coordinates that preserves this form is a canonical transformation; these are a special case of a symplectomorphism, which are essentially a change of coordinates on a symplectic manifold.
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