Abstract
We develop a general stability theory for equilibrium points of Poisson dynamical systems and relative equilibria of Hamiltonian systems with symmetries, including several generalisations of the Energy-Casimir and Energy-Momentum Methods. Using a topological generalisation of Lyapunov’s result that an extremal critical point of a conserved quantity is stable, we show that a Poisson equilibrium is stable if it is an isolated point in the intersection of a level set of a conserved function with a subset of the phase space that is related to the topology of the symplectic leaf space at that point. This criterion is applied to generalise the energy-momentum method to Hamiltonian systems which are invariant under non-compact symmetry groups for which the coadjoint orbit space is not Hausdorff. We also show that a G-stable relative equilibrium satisfies the stronger condition of being A-stable, where A is a specific group-theoretically defined subset of G which contains the momentum isotropy subgroup of the relative equilibrium. The results are illustrated by an application to the stability of a rigid body in an ideal irrotational fluid.