RUS  ENG
Full version
JOURNALS // Uspekhi Matematicheskikh Nauk // Archive

Uspekhi Mat. Nauk, 2020 Volume 75, Issue 6(456), Pages 153–161 (Mi rm9977)

This article is cited in 2 papers

Spinning tops and magnetic orbits

S. P. Novikov

Steklov Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

Abstract: A number of directions were initiated by the author and his students in their papers of 1981–1982. However, one of them, concerning the properties of closed orbits on the sphere $S^2$ and in the groups $S^3$ and $\operatorname{SO}_3$, has not been sufficiently developed. This paper revives the discussion of these questions, states unsolved problems, and explains what was regarded as fallacies in old papers. In general, magnetic orbits have been poorly discussed in the literature on dynamical systems and theoretical mechanics, but Grinevich has pointed out that in theoretical physics one encounters similar situations in the theory related to particle accelerators such as proton cyclotrons. It is interesting to look at Chap. III of Landau and Lifshitz's Theoretical physics, vol. 2, Field theory (translated into English as The classical theory of fields [12]), where mathematical relatives of our situations occur, but the physics is completely different and there are actual strong magnetic fields.
Bibliography: 12 titles.

Keywords: spinning tops, magnetic orbits, self-intersections.

UDC: 514.853

MSC: Primary 58E05, 58E30; Secondary 49N60

Received: 28.08.2020

DOI: 10.4213/rm9977


 English version:
Russian Mathematical Surveys, 2020, 75:6, 1133–1141

Bibliographic databases:


© Steklov Math. Inst. of RAS, 2025