General Volume-Preserving Mechanical Systems

In this letter, we present the general form of equations that generate a volume-preserving flow on a symplectic manifold (M, \omega). It is shown that every volume-preserving flow has some 2-forms acting the role of the Hamiltonian functions in the Hamiltonian mechanics and the ordinary Hamilton equations are included as a special case with a 2-form \frac{1}{n-1} H \omega where H is the corresponding Hamiltonian.Comment: Plain LaTeX, 13 pages, no figure

On Torsion and Nieh-Yan Form

Using the well-known Chern-Weil formula and its generalization, we systematically construct the Chern-Simons forms and their generalization induced by torsion as well as the Nieh-Yan (N-Y) forms. We also give an argument on the vanishing of integration of N-Y form on any compact manifold without boundary. A systematic construction of N-Y forms in D=4n dimension is also given.Comment: 7 pages, latex, no figure