On Gibbs States of Mechanical Systems with Symmetries

Abstract

Gibbs states for the Hamiltonian action of a Lie group on a symplectic manifold were studied, and their possible applications in Physics and Cosmology were considered, by the French mathematician and physicist Jean-Marie Souriau. They are presented here with detailed proofs of all the stated results. Using an adaptation of the cross product for pseudo-Euclidean three-dimensional vector spaces, we present several examples of such Gibbs states, together with the associated thermodynamic functions, for various two-dimensional symplectic manifolds, including the pseudo-spheres, the Poincar\'e disk and the Poincar\'e half-plane.