Characteristic class of a bundle and the existence of a global Routh function

Abstract: The possibility of the global Lagrangian reduction of a mechanical system with symmetry is shown to be connected with the characteristic class of a principal fiber bundle of the configuration space over the factor manifold. It is proved that the reduced system is globally Lagrangian if and only if the product of the momentum constant with this characteristic class is zero. In the case of a rigid body rotating about a fixed point in an axially symmetric force field the bundle over a 2-sphere is non-trivial, therefore the reduced system admits a global Routh function if and only if the momentum constant is zero.