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So, I'm in a quest of understanding classical field theory on my own, and I'm interested in its rigorous construction. Here's the link for a previous post of mine on mathoverflow. The interesting discussions there led me to this new post here, which I will use some of the notations I used there.

Notation: If ${\bf{x}} = (x_{1},...,x_{n}) \in \mathbb{R}^{n}$ and $f=f({\bf{x}})$ is real-valued and differentiable, I'll denote: $$\frac{\partial f}{\partial \bf{x}} := \bigg{(}\frac{\partial f}{\partial x_{1}},...,\frac{\partial f}{\partial x_{n}}\bigg{)} \equiv \nabla f.$$

This notation is useful since, if $f$ is a function of more than one variable, e.g. $f=f(\bf{x},\bf{y},\bf{z})$, then $\partial f/{\partial \bf{x}}$ means the gradient with respect to the $\bf{x}$ variable.

Legendre Transforms for many variable functions

Here, I'm following Arnold. Let $f: \mathbb{R}^{n}\to \mathbb{R}$ be a twice-differentiable function such that its Hessian $\nabla^{2}f$ is positive-definite (so $f$ is strictly convex). Let $G=G({\bf{p}},{\bf{x}}) := \langle {\bf{p}},{\bf{x}}\rangle - f({\bf{x}})$, where $\langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle$ is the usual inner product on $\mathbb{R}^{n}$. Then, the Legendre transform of $f$ is defined to be the function $g=g({\bf{p}}) := \max_{{\bf{x}}}G({\bf{p}},{\bf{x}})$. Notice that $G$ attains its maximum iff $\frac{\partial G}{\partial \bf{x}} = 0$, so that the vector $\bf{x}$ which maximizes $G$ for a fixed $\bf{p}$ is the solution of: \begin{eqnarray} \frac{\partial f}{\partial \bf{x}} = \bf{p} \tag{1}\label{1} \end{eqnarray}

Let $L=L(t,{\bf{x}},\dot{{\bf{x}}})$ be a Lagragian on the phase space as studied in classical mechanics. Because the Hamiltonian $H=H(t,{\bf{x}},{\bf{p}})$ is the Legendre transform of $L$, equation (\ref{1}) becomes: \begin{eqnarray} \frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot{{\bf{x}}}} = {\bf{p}} \tag{2}\label{2} \end{eqnarray} which is one of the Hamilton's equations usually found in textbooks.

Classical Field Theory

As discussed in my previous question linked above, the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian now become functions of fields, which are infinite-dimensional vectors indexed by space-time coordinates $(t,{\bf{x}})\in \mathbb{R}^{4}$. Let us denote $\mathcal{F}$ the space of fields, which we assume to be sufficiently smooth and regular at infinity so that the following integrals are always finite.

In textbooks, the Hamiltonian for a classical field theory is given by: \begin{eqnarray} H(t, \phi, \partial_{{\bf{x}}}\phi,\pi) := \int \pi(t,{\bf{x}})\dot{\phi}(t,{\bf{x}})d{\bf{x}} - L(t, \phi, \partial_{\mu}\phi) \tag{3}\label{3} \end{eqnarray}

Question 1: How does one define the Legendre transform in such infinite-dimensional space such that the Hamiltonian becomes (\ref{3})?

Question 2: Once question 1 is answered and the Hamiltonian is defined in this infinite-dimensional space, there should be an identity similar to (\ref{2}) so that the usual formula: \begin{eqnarray} \pi(t,{\bf{x}}) = \frac{\partial \mathscr{L}}{\partial \dot{\phi}(t,{\bf{x}})} \tag{4}\label{4} \end{eqnarray} holds. What is the meaning of the derivative in the right hand side of (\ref{4})? I'm assuming the space of fields $\mathcal{F}$ is a Banach space (actually, probably an inner product space) so that the above derivative is Fréchet?

ADD: As I stressed before, in classical mechanics one can define the Hamiltonian as: \begin{eqnarray} H(t,{\bf{p}},{\bf{x}}) = \langle {\bf{p}}, \dot{{\bf{x}}}\rangle - L(t,{\bf{x}},\dot{{\bf{x}}}) \tag{5}\label{5} \end{eqnarray} where, in (\ref{5}) it is understood that $\dot{{\bf{x}}}$ should be considered as a function of ${\bf{p}}$ by means of the solution of (\ref{2}). Thus, in classical field theory, we can define the Hamiltonian following the same recipe, by setting: \begin{eqnarray} H(t,\phi, \partial_{{\bf{x}}}\phi, \pi) := \int \pi(t,{\bf{x}})\dot{\phi}(t,{\bf{x}})d{\bf{x}} - L(t, \phi, \partial_{\mu}\phi). \tag{6}\label{6} \end{eqnarray}

However, in classical mechanics, the Hamiltonian (\ref{5}) is the Legendre transform of $L$ and (\ref{2}) follows naturally. So, the objective of my question is to check wether the infinite-dimensional case can also be defined by means of an appropriate infinite-dimensional Legendre transform analogous to the finite-dimensional case, so that the conjugate variable $\pi$ as defined by (\ref{4}) is naturally enherited from the maximality of this Legendre transform as it is the case for the finite-dimensional case.

MathMath
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    Comment to the post (v2): Eq. (2) is not one of the Hamilton's equations per se. – Qmechanic Feb 02 '21 at 00:55
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    Related question in point mechanics: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/105912/2451 – Qmechanic Feb 02 '21 at 01:05
  • Off the top of my head, I do not recall Arnold discussing classical field theory, but Abraham, Marsden, and Ratiu do. And Giaccheta and Sardanshvili wrote two monographs on mathematical field theory. One of these three references should a rigorous definition of a Legendre transformation of the "configurations space". – DanielC Feb 02 '21 at 01:14
  • @DanielC yes, Arnold do not discuss it sadly. I followed Arnold only in the section about Legendre transforms for finitely many variables. – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 01:16
  • @Qmechanic thanks for the comments. About eq. (2), you mean that this is not one of Hamilton's equations because it is usually stated as the definition of ${\bf{p}}$, right? This is what I meant, but it sounds wrong in my post. You are right. About the post linked: this is exactly what I'm looking for but for a field theory instead of point mechanics! – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 01:18
  • Also, in fact Marsden et. al. have a beautiful set of books on the topic. Much of the material, however, is discussed using manifolds and tangent bundles, which I'm not familiar yet. So I'm looking for a more 'functional analysis' approach, if I may say so. – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 01:20
  • "What is the meaning of the derivative in the right hand side of (4)?" You do understand it as a functional derivative, so pretty much (2), upon the possibly confusing notational switch ${\mathbf x}\mapsto \phi ({\mathbf x}), ~~{\mathbf p}\mapsto \pi ({\mathbf x})$, no? – Cosmas Zachos Feb 02 '21 at 21:03
  • @CosmasZachos I understand it as a functional derivative, in fact. But there seems to be some sort of misunderstandings between the treatment of functional derivatives as it is used by physicists and mathematicians. As it is the case in the linked post, physicists use functional derivatives as directional derivatives in the direction of delta distributions, while mathematicians define it as Gatêaux derivatives. It seems that what physicists do is to find the integral kernel of the functional, while mathematicians use auxiliary theorems to prove this kernel satisfies the wanted equations. – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 21:43
  • OK, is all clear now? – Cosmas Zachos Feb 02 '21 at 21:45
  • I think this point is. But the first question is still bothering me. – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 21:50
  • One generalizes the finite variables' expression to one with an infinity of variables, mutatis mutandis. – Cosmas Zachos Feb 02 '21 at 21:53
  • Precisely. But my point is: I can simply define the Hamiltonian in infinite-dimensional space by (6), mimicking the finite-dimensional case or I could define Legendre transforms in infinite-dimensional spaces and show that the Hamiltonian, defined as this Legendre transform, becomes (6). Is the second approach doable? – MathMath Feb 02 '21 at 23:09
  • On this SE, of course... – Cosmas Zachos Feb 03 '21 at 12:19

1 Answers1

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A rigorous definition in function spaces can be given via the Legendre-Fenchel transform; see, e.g.,

Applications in elasticity theory are given in

For an elementary introduction relating this to the 1D case of the Legendre transform see