On the Poincar\'e's generating function and the symplectic mid-point rule

Abstract

The use of Liouvillian forms to obtain symplectic maps for constructing numerical integrators is a natural alternative to the method of generating functions, and provides a deeper understanding of the geometry of this procedure. Using Liouvillian forms we study the generating function introduced by Poincar\'e (1899) and its associated symplectic map. We show that in this framework, Poincar\'e's generating function does not correspond to the symplectic mid-point rule, but to the identity map. We give an interpretation of this result based on the original framework constructed by Poincar\'e.