On Lagrangians with Reduced-Order Euler-Lagrange Equations

Abstract

If a Lagrangian defining a variational problem has order k, then its Euler-Lagrange equations generically have order 2k. This paper considers the case where the Euler-Lagrange equations have order strictly less than 2k, and shows that in such a case the Lagrangian must be a polynomial in the highest-order derivative variables, with a specific upper bound on the degree of the polynomial. The paper also provides an explicit formulation, derived from a geometrical construction, of a family of such k-th order Lagrangians, and it is conjectured that all such Lagrangians arise in this way.