ABSTRACT
In this chapter we give a very brief introduction to Hamiltonian differential equations. These equations are one way to describing mechanical systems without any friction. We mainly give the local treatment near fixed points or periodic orbits. For a more complete treatment, see one of the several books devoted entirely to Hamiltonian systems: Meyer and Hall (1992) is a good recent book of approximately the level of this one; other books include Siegel and Moser (1971), Abraham and Marsden (1978), Arnold (1978), Arnold, Kozlov, and Neishtadt (1993), and Dankowicz (1997).
