New Role of Null Lagrangians in Derivation of Equations of Motion for Dynamical Systems

Abstract

The space of Null Lagrangians is the least investigated territory in dynamics since they are identically sent to zero by their Euler-Lagrange operator and thereby having no effects on equations of motion. A humble effort to discover the relevance of these Null Lagrangians in dynamics is made by introducing a generalized procedure (with respect to the recent procedure introduced by the authors of this paper) that takes advantage of the null-ness of these Lagrangians to construct non-standard Lagrangians that represent a range of interesting dynamical systems. By using the generalized procedure, derivation of equations of motion for a harmonic oscillator as well as for the Bateman and Duffing oscillators is presented. The obtained results demonstrate a new role played by the null Lagrangians and their corresponding non-standard Lagrangians in describing linear and nonlinear, and dissipative and non-dissipative dynamical systems.