Hamiltonian reduction of free particle motion on the group SL(2, ℝ)

Abstract

We analyze the structure of the reduced phase space that arises in the Hamiltonian reduction of the phase space of free particle motion over the groupSL(2, ℝ). The reduction considered is based on introducing constraints that are analogous to those used in the reduction of the Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten model to Toda systems. It is shown that the reduced phase space is diffeomorphic either to a union of two two-dimensional planes or to a cylinder S¹×ℝ. We construct canonical coordinates for both cases and show that in the first case, the reduced phase space is symplectomorphic to the union of two cotangent bundles T*(ℝ) endowed with a canonical symplectic structure, while in the second case, it is symplectomorphic to the cotangent bundle T* (S¹), which is also endowed with a canonical symplectic structure.