Exactness of Lepage 2-forms and globally variational differential equations

Abstract

The exactness equation for Lepage 2-forms, associated with variational systems of ordinary differential equations on smooth manifolds, is analyzed with the aim to construct a concrete global variational principle. It is shown that locally variational systems defined by homogeneous functions of degree $c\ne 0,1$ are automatically globally variational. A new constructive method of finding a global Lagrangian is described for these systems, which include for instance the geodesic equations in Riemann and Finsler geometry.

arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1812.04270