Degenerate relative equilibria, curvature of the momentum map, and homoclinic bifurcation

A fundamental class of solutions of symmetric Hamiltonian systems is relative equilibria. In this paper the nonlinear problem near a degenerate relative equilibrium is considered. The degeneracy creates a saddle-center and attendant homoclinic bifurcation in the reduced system transverse to the group orbit. The surprising result is that the curvature of the pullback of the momentum map to the Lie algebra determines the normal form for the homoclinic bifurcation. There is also an induced directional geometric phase in the homoclinic bifurcation. The backbone of the analysis is the use of singularity theory for smooth mappings between manifolds applied to the pullback of the momentum map. The theory is constructive and generalities are given for symmetric Hamiltonian systems on a vector space of dimension (2n+2) with an n-dimensional abelian symmetry group. Examples for n=1,2,3 are presented to illustrate application of the theory.