Hamiltonian Monodromy via spectral Lax pairs

Abstract: Hamiltonian Monodromy is the simplest topological obstruction to the existence of global action-angle coordinates in a completely integrable system. We show that this property can be studied in a neighborhood of a focus-focus singularity by a spectral Lax pair approach. From the Lax pair, we derive a Riemann surface which allows us to compute in a straightforward way the corresponding Monodromy matrix. The general results are applied to the Jaynes-Cummings model and the spherical pendulum.