Questions tagged [symplectic-geometry]
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2 questions
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What was Liouville's contribution to Liouville's theorem?
Liouville's theorem asserts that the volume of phase space is incompressible. This was first shown by Gibbs 1903 but his name is mostly forgotten. The Wikipedia article says
It is referred to as ...
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Why are canonical coordinates canonical?
Canonical coordinates are
coordinates $q_i$ and $p_i$ in phase space that are used in the Hamiltonian formalism. The canonical coordinates satisfy the fundamental Poisson bracket relations:
\...
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