This paper develops the theory of Dirac reduction by symmetry for nonholonomic systems on Lie groups with broken symmetry. The reduction is carried out for the Dirac structures, as well as for the associated Lagrange-Dirac and Hamilton-Dirac dynamical systems. This reduction procedure is accompanied by reduction of the associated variational structures on both Lagrangian and Hamiltonian sides. The reduced dynamical systems obtained are called the implicit Euler-Poincare-Suslov equations with advected parameters and the implicit Lie-Poisson-Suslov equations with advected parameters. The theory is illustrated with the help of finite and infinite dimensional examples. It is shown that equations of motion for second order Rivlin-Ericksen fluids can be formulated as an infinite dimensional nonholonomic system in the framework of the present paper.
The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of multi-Dirac structures and to describe their role in the description of classical field theories. We begin by outlining a variational principle for field theories, referred to as the Hamilton-Pontryagin principle, and we show that the resulting field equations are the Euler-Lagrange equations in implicit form. Secondly, we introduce multi-Dirac structures as a graded analog of standard Dirac structures, and we show that the graph of a multisymplectic form determines a multi-Dirac structure. We then discuss the role of multi-Dirac structures in field theory by showing that the implicit field equations obtained from the Hamilton-Pontryagin principle can be described intrinsically using multi-Dirac structures. Furthermore, we show that any multi-Dirac structure naturally gives rise to a multi-Poisson bracket. We treat the case of field theories with nonholonomic constraints, showing that the integrability of the constraints is equivalent to the integrability of the underlying multi-Dirac structure. We finish with a number of illustrative examples, including time-dependent mechanics, nonlinear scalar fields and the electromagnetic field.
