Stability and bifurcations of symmetric tops

We study the stability and bifurcation of relative equilibria of a particle on the Lie group $SO(3)$ whose motion is governed by an $SO(3) \times SO(2)$ invariant metric and an $SO(2) \times SO(2)$ invariant potential. Our method is to reduce the number of degrees of freedom at singular values of the $SO(2) \times SO(2)$ momentum map and study the stability of the equilibria of the reduced systems as a function of spin. The result is an elementary analysis of the fast/slow transition in the Lagrange and Kirchhoff tops.

More generally, since an $SO(2) \times SO(2)$ invariant potential on $SO(3)$ can be thought of as $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant function on a circle, we analyze the stability and bifurcation of relative equilibria of the system in terms of the second and fourth derivative of the function.

Keywords

bifurcation, stability, finite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification

Primary 37J20, 37J25. Secondary 58A40.

Full Text (PDF format)

Received 9 November 2021

Received revised 6 March 2022

Accepted 5 April 2022

Published 20 November 2023