Topology of energy surfaces and existence of transversal Poincaré sections

Abstract

Two questions on the topology of compact energy surfaces of natural two degrees of freedom Hamiltonian systems in a magnetic field are discussed. We show that the topology of this 3-manifold (if it is not a unit tangent bundle) is uniquely determined by the Euler characteristic of the accessible region in configuration space. In this class of 3-manifolds for most cases there does not exist a transverse and complete Poincaré section. We show that there are topological obstacles for its existence such that only in the cases of $S^1\times S^2$ and $T^3$ such a Poincaré section can exist.