Liouville's theorem
Statement
Let be the Hamiltonian vector field of on a symplectic manifold of dimension , defined by , and let be its flow. Then preserves the symplectic volume form: for every . In particular the Hamiltonian flow preserves phase-space volume.
Why is it true?
In classical mechanics, Liouville's theorem is the mathematical reason a gas of particles obeying Hamilton's equations cannot spontaneously compress itself into a smaller region of phase space: the flow may stretch and twist the region into a wild shape, but its volume never shrinks or grows. This underlies statistical mechanics and explains why naive numerical integrators that do not respect this conservation law can produce spurious energy drift over long simulations.
Proof sketch
Step 1 (Cartan's magic formula). For any vector field and form , Cartan's formula gives . Apply this to equal to : since is closed, , and since by definition of the Hamiltonian vector field, we get .
Step 2 (the form itself does not change). The exterior derivative satisfies for every function, so . Hence : the Hamiltonian flow preserves the symplectic form itself, not merely its volume.
Step 3 (pass to the top power). The volume form is ( factors). The Leibniz rule for the Lie derivative on wedge products gives , and since by Step 2, the right-hand side vanishes: .
Step 4 (integrate along the flow). If is the flow of , then means exactly for every . Since gives , integrating shows for all , which is Liouville's theorem.
Topics that use this theorem
Step-by-step proofs
No step-by-step proof yet for this theorem.
References
- Dusa McDuff, Dietmar Salamon (2017). Introduction to Symplectic Topology
- Mikhail Gromov (1985). Pseudo holomorphic curves in symplectic manifolds
- Pazit Haim-Kislev, Yaron Ostrover (2026). A Counterexample to Viterbo's Conjecture · arXiv:2405.16513