A geometric interpretation of integrable motions

Abstract

Integrability, one of the classic issues in galactic dynamics and in general in celestial mechanics, is here revisited in a Riemannian geometric framework, where newtonian motions are seen as geodesics of suitable ``mechanical'' manifolds. The existence of constants of motion that entail integrability is associated with the existence of Killing tensor fields on the mechanical manifolds. Such tensor fields correspond to hidden symmetries of non-Noetherian kind. Explicit expressions for Killing tensor fields are given for the N=2 Toda model, and for a modified Henon-Heiles model, recovering the already known analytic expressions of the second conserved quantity besides energy for each model respectively.