Variational Discretizations for Hamiltonian Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we study the Lagrangian functions for a class of second-order differential systems arising from physics. For such systems, we present necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Lagrangian functions. Based on the variational principle and the splitting technique, we construct variational integrators and prove their equivalence to the composition of explicit symplectic methods. We apply the newly derived variational integrators to the Kepler problem and demonstrate their effectiveness in numerical simulations. Moreover, using the modified Lagrangian, we analyze the dynamical behavior of the numerical solutions in preserving the Laplace--Runge--Lenz (LRL) vector.