arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to P. Urbanski.
We review the concept of a graded bundle, which is a generalisation of a vector bundle, its linearisation, and a double structure of this kind. We then present applications of these structures in geometric mechanics including systems with higher order Lagrangian and the Plateau problem.
A 'Liouville structure' is a structure isomorphic to a cotangent vector fibration. A Liouville structure is an essential ingredient of every variational formulation of a physical theory. For reasons of interpretation the Liouville structure can not be replaced by the corresponding cotangent fibration. We give a precise definition of Liouville structures, study their properties, and give examples used in variational formulations of mechanics.
Main ideas of the differential geometry on affine bundles are presented. Affine counterparts of Lie algebroid and Poisson structures are introduced and discussed. The developed concepts are applied in a frame-independent formulation of the time-dependent and the Newtonian mechanics.
The notion of homogeneous tensors is discussed. We show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between multivector fields on a manifold $M$, homogeneous with respect to a vector field $Δ$ on $M$, and first-order polydifferential operators on a closed submanifold $N$ of codimension 1 such that $Δ$ is transversal to $N$. This correspondence relates the Schouten-Nijenhuis bracket of multivector fields on $M$ to the Schouten-Jacobi bracket of first-order polydifferential operators on $N$ and generalizes the Poissonization of Jacobi manifolds. Actually, it can be viewed as a super-Poissonization. This procedure of passing from a homogeneous multivector field to a first-order polydifferential operator can be also understood as a sort of reduction; in the standard case -- a half of a Poisson reduction. A dual version of the above correspondence yields in particular the correspondence between $Δ$-homogeneous symplectic structures on $M$ and contact structures on $N$.