A2.2 B2.1
(i) Consider a light rigid circular wire of radius and centre . The wire lies in a vertical plane, which rotates about the vertical axis through . At time the plane containing the wire makes an angle with a fixed vertical plane. A bead of mass is threaded onto the wire. The bead slides without friction along the wire, and its location is denoted by . The angle between the line and the downward vertical is .
Show that the Lagrangian of the system is
Calculate two independent constants of the motion, and explain their physical significance.
(ii) A dynamical system has Hamiltonian , where is a parameter. Consider an ensemble of identical systems chosen so that the number density of systems, , in the phase space element is either zero or one. Prove Liouville's Theorem, namely that the total area of phase space occupied by the ensemble is time-independent.
Now consider a single system undergoing periodic motion . Give a heuristic argument based on Liouville's Theorem to show that the area enclosed by the orbit,
is approximately conserved as the parameter is slowly varied (i.e. that is an adiabatic invariant).
Consider , with a positive integer. Show that as is slowly varied the energy of the system, , varies as