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We study some aspects of the dynamics of the nonholonomic system formed by a heavy homogeneous ball constrained to roll without sliding on a steadily rotating surface of revolution. First, in the case in which the figure axis of the surface is vertical (and hence the system is $\textrm{SO(3)}\times\textrm{SO(2)}$-symmetric) and the surface has a (nondegenerate) maximum at its vertex, we show the existence of motions asymptotic to the vertex and rule out the possibility of blow up. This is done passing to the 5-dimensional $\textrm{SO(3)}$-reduced system. The $\textrm{SO(3)}$-symmetry persists when the figure axis of the surface is inclined with respect to the vertical -- and the system can be viewed as a simple model for the Japanese kasamawashi (turning umbrella) performance art -- and in that case we study the (stability of the) equilibria of the 5-dimensional reduced system.

We study the class of nonholonomic mechanical systems formed by a heavy symmetric ball that rolls without sliding on a surface of revolution, which is either at rest or rotates about its (vertical) figure axis with uniform angular velocity. The first studies of these systems go back over a century, but a comprehensive understanding of their dynamics is still missing. The system has an $SO(3) \times SO(2)$ symmetry and reduces to four dimensions. We extend in various directions, particularly from the case $\Omega = 0$ to the case $\Omega \ne 0$, a number of previous results and give new results. In particular, we prove that the reduced system is Hamiltonizable even if $\Omega \ne 0$ and, exploiting the recently introduced `moving energy', we give sufficient conditions on the profile of the surface that ensure the periodicity of the reduced dynamics and hence the quasi-periodicity of the unreduced dynamics on tori of dimension up to three. Furthermore, we determine all the equilibria of the reduced system, which are classified in three distinct families, and determine their stability properties. In addition to this, we give a new form of the equations of motion of nonholonomic systems in quasi-velocities which, at variance from the well known Hamel equations, use any set of quasi-velocities and explicitly contain the reaction forces.

In this paper, we give a new characterization of the cut locus of a point on a compact Riemannian manifold as the zero set of the optimal transport density solution of the Monge-Kantorovich equations, a PDE formulation of the optimal transport problem with cost equal to the geodesic distance. Combining this result with an optimal transport numerical solver based on the so-called dynamical Monge-Kantorovich approach, we propose a novel framework for the numerical approximation of the cut locus of a point in a manifold. We show the applicability of the proposed method on a few examples settled on 2d-surfaces embedded in $R^{3}$ and discuss advantages and limitations.

We consider the the n-dimensional generalisation of the nonholonomic Veselova problem. We derive the reduced equations of motion in terms of the mass tensor of the body and determine some general properties of the dynamics. In particular we give a closed formula for the invariant measure, we indicate the existence of steady rotation solutions, and obtain some results on their stability. We then focus our attention on bodies whose mass tensor has a specific type of symmetry. We show that the phase space is foliated by invariant tori that carry quasi-periodic dynamics in the natural time variable. Our results enlarge the known cases of integrability of the multi-dimensional Veselova top. Moreover, they show that in some previously known instances of integrability, the flow is quasi-periodic without the need of a time reparametrisation., Comment: 37 pp

In nonholonomic mechanical systems with constraints that are affine (linear nonhomogeneous) functions of the velocities, the energy is typically not a first integral. It was shown in [Fass\`o and Sansonetto, JNLS, 26, (2016)] that, nevertheless, there exist modifications of the energy, called there moving energies, which under suitable conditions are first integrals. The first goal of this paper is to study the properties of these functions and the conditions that lead to their conservation. In particular, we enlarge the class of moving energies considered in [Fass\`o and Sansonetto, JNLS, 26, (2016)]. The second goal of the paper is to demonstrate the relevance of moving energies in nonholonomic mechanics. We show that certain first integrals of some well known systems (the affine Veselova and LR systems), which had been detected on a case-by-case way, are instances of moving energies. Moreover, we determine conserved moving energies for a class of affine systems on Lie groups that include the LR systems, for a heavy convex rigid body that rolls without slipping on a uniformly rotating plane, and for an $n$-dimensional generalization of the Chaplygin sphere problem to a uniformly rotating hyperplane., Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure. Final version prepared according to the modifications suggested by the referees of Nonlinearity

Integrable Hamiltonian systems on almost-symplectic manifolds have recently drawn some attention. Under suitable properties, they have a structure analogous to those of standard symplectic-Hamiltonian completely integrable systems. Here we study small Hamiltonian perturbations of these systems. Preliminarily, we investigate some general properties of these systems. In particular, we show that if the perturbation is `strongly Hamiltonian' (namely, its Hamiltonian vector field is also a symmetry of the almost-Hamiltonian structure) then the system reduces, under an almost-symplectic version of symplectic reduction, to a family of nearly integrable standard symplectic-Hamiltonian vector fields on a reduced phase space, of codimension not less than 3. Therefore, we restrict our study to non-strongly Hamiltonian perturbations. We will show that KAM theorem on the survival of strongly nonresonant quasi-periodic tori does non apply, but that a weak version of Nekhoroshev theorem on the stability of actions is instead valid, even though for a time scale which is polynomial (rather than exponential) in the inverse of the perturbation parameter.

We characterize the conditions for the conservation of the energy and of the components of the momentum maps of lifted actions, and of their `gauge-like' generalizations, in time-independent nonholonomic mechanical systems with affine constraints. These conditions involve geometrical and mechanical properties of the system, and are codified in the so-called reaction-annihilator distribution.

Energy is in general not conserved for mechanical nonholonomic systems with affine constraints. In this article we point out that, nevertheless, in certain cases, there is a modification of the energy that is conserved. Such a function coincides with the energy of the system relative to a different reference frame, in which the constraint is linear. After giving sufficient conditions for this to happen, we point out the role of symmetry in this mechanism. Lastly, we apply these ideas to prove that the motions of a heavy homogeneous solid sphere that rolls inside a convex surface of revolution in uniform rotation about its vertical figure axis, are (at least for certain parameter values and in open regions of the phase space) quasi-periodic on tori of dimension up to three.

At variance from the cases of relative equilibria and relative periodic orbits of dynamical systems with symmetry, the dynamics in relative quasi-periodic tori (namely, subsets of the phase space that project to an invariant torus of the reduced system on which the flow is quasi-periodic) is not yet completely understood. Even in the simplest situation of a free action of a compact and abelian connected group, the dynamics in a relative quasi-periodic torus is not necessarily quasi-periodic. It is known that quasi-periodicity of the unreduced dynamics is related to the reducibility of the reconstruction equation, and sufficient conditions for it are virtually known only in a perturbation context. We provide a different, though equivalent, approach to this subject, based on the hypothesis of the existence of commuting, group-invariant lifts of a set of generators of the reduced torus. Under this hypothesis, which is shown to be equivalent to the reducibility of the reconstruction equation, we give a complete description of the structure of the relative quasi-periodic torus, which is a principal torus bundle whose fibers are tori of a dimension which exceeds that of the reduced torus by at most the rank of the group. The construction can always be done in such a way that these tori have minimal dimension and carry ergodic flow., Comment: 19 pages. Third version includes corrections suggested by the journal. This version has been accepted for publication in Nonlinearity

Bifibrations, in symplectic geometry called also dual pairs, play a relevant role in the theory of superintegrable Hamiltonian systems. We prove the existence of an analogous bifibrated geometry in dynamical systems with a symmetry group such that the reduced dynamics is periodic. The integrability of such systems has been proven by M. Field and J. Hermans with a reconstruction technique. We apply the result to the nonholonomic system of a ball rolling on a surface of revolution., Comment: This is a contribution to the Proc. of workshop on Geometric Aspects of Integrable Systems (July 17-19, 2006; Coimbra, Portugal), published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/

We study the ellipticity and the ``Nekhoroshev stability'' (stability properties for finite, but very long, time scales) of the Riemann ellipsoids. We provide numerical evidence that the regions of ellipticity of the ellipsoids of types II and III are larger than those found by Chandrasekhar in the 60's and that all Riemann ellipsoids, except a finite number of codimension one subfamilies, are Nekhoroshev--stable. We base our analysis on a Hamiltonian formulation of the problem on a covering space, using recent results from Hamiltonian perturbation theory., Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures