Liouville integrability of Beltrami-Maxwell fields with sources: A geometric theory of magnetic surfaces

Abstract

We study classical Maxwell fields with non-trivial sources in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. In particular, contact and symplectic geometric aspects are discussed. As a point of departure, it is shown that a few classes of solutions with sources are constructed from the so-called Beltrami fields, where these fields are contact forms on three-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. In addition, several applications in these classes are provided. One is to give a solution to the London equations for superconductors. Another one is that, if there is a non-trivial conserved quantity along the magnetic vector field, then the Maxwell system can be viewed as a Liouville integrable Hamiltonian system on a four-dimensional symplectic manifold, where this manifold is obtained by a symplectization of the contact manifold. As examples, Maxwell fields with the Lundquist model, a restricted case of the ABC flow model, and so on, are shown to be integrable in the above sense.