The Reduced Euler-Lagrange Equations

Marsden and Scheurle [1993] studied Lagrangian reduction in the context of momentum map constraints—here meaning the reduction of the standard Euler-Lagrange system restricted to a level set of a momentum map. This provides a Lagrangian parallel to the reduction of symplectic manifolds. The present paper studies the Lagrangian parallel of Poisson reduction for Hamiltonian systems. For the reduction of a Lagrangian system on a level set of a conserved quantity, a key object is the Routhian, which is the Lagrangian minus the mechanical connection paired with the fixed value of the momentum map. For unconstrained systems, we use a velocity shifted Lagrangian, which plays the role of the Routhian in the constrained theory. Hamilton’s variational principle for the Euler-Lagrange equations breaks up into two sets of equations that represent a set of Euler-Lagrange equations with gyroscopic forcing that can be written in terms of the curvature of the connection for horizontal variations, and into the Euler-Poincaré equations for the vertical variations. This new set of equations is what we call the reduced Euler-Lagrange equations , and it includes the Euler-Poincaré and the Hamel equations as special cases. We illustrate this methodology for a rigid body with internal rotors and for a particle moving in a magnetic field.