Rotating saddle trap as Foucault's pendulum

Abstract

One of the many surprising results found in the mechanics of rotating systems is the stabilization of a particle in a rapidly rotating planar saddle potential. Besides the counterintuitive stabilization, an unexpected precessional motion is observed. In this note we show that this precession is due to a Coriolis-like force caused by the rotation of the potential. To our knowledge this is the first example where such force arises in an inertial reference frame. We also propose an idea of a simple mechanical demonstration of this effect.

13 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Brouwer's problem on a heavy particle in a rotating vessel: wave propagation, ion traps, and rotor dynamics
• Trapping massless Dirac particles in a rotating saddle

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