Extended Hamilton-Jacobi theory, contact manifolds, and integrability by quadratures

Abstract

A Hamilton-Jacobi theory for general dynamical systems, defined on fibered phase spaces, has been recently developed. In this paper, we shall apply such a theory to contact Hamiltonian systems, as those appearing in thermodynamics and on geodesic flows in fluid mechanics. We first study the partial and complete solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation related to these systems. Then, we show that, for a given contact system, the knowledge of what we have called a complete pseudo-isotropic solution ensures the integrability by quadratures of its equations of motion. This extends to contact manifolds a recent result obtained in the context of general symplectic and Poisson manifolds.