The Cartan-Kähler theorem for exterior differential systems on transitive Lie algebroids

Abstract

The notion of an exterior differential system (on a manifold) has recently been extended to the setting of a Lie algebroid. Here, we further develop the theory and we present two versions of the Cartan-Kähler theorem in the case where the anchor map of the Lie algebroid is surjective. We give an illustrative example and, as a concrete application, we make use of our results in a specific case of the so-called invariant inverse problem of the calculus of variations.