Paper 1, Section I, E
Part II, 2019
(a) A mechanical system with degrees of freedom has the Lagrangian , where are the generalized coordinates and .
Suppose that is invariant under the continuous symmetry transformation , where is a real parameter and . State and prove Noether's theorem for this system.
(b) A particle of mass moves in a conservative force field with potential energy , where is the position vector in three-dimensional space.
Let be cylindrical polar coordinates. is said to have helical symmetry if it is of the form
for some constant . Show that a particle moving in a potential with helical symmetry has a conserved quantity that is a linear combination of angular and linear momenta.