CONSERVED QUANTITIES ON MULTISYMPLECTIC MANIFOLDS

Given a vector field on a manifold M, we define a globally conserved quantity to be a di fferential form whose Lie derivative is exact. Integrals of conserved quantities over suitable submanifolds are constant under time evolution, the Kelvin circulation theorem being a well-known special case. More generally, conserved quantities are well behaved under transgression to spaces of maps into M. We focus on the case of multisymplectic manifolds and Hamiltonian vector fields. Our main result is that in the presence of a Lie group of symmetries admitting a homotopy co-momentum map, one obtains a whole family of globally conserved quantities. This extends a classical result in symplectic geometry. We carry this out in a general setting, considering several variants of the notion of globally conserved quantity.