Symmetries, conservation and dissipation in time-dependent contact systems

In contact Hamiltonian systems, the so-called dissipated quantities are akin to conserved quantities in classical Hamiltonian systems. In this paper, we prove a Noether’s theorem for non-autonomous contact Hamiltonian systems, characterizing a class of symmetries which are in bijection with dissipated quantities. We also study other classes of symmetries which preserve (up to a conformal factor) additional structures, such as the contact form or the Hamiltonian function. Furthermore, making use of the geometric structures of the extended tangent bundle, we introduce additional classes of symmetries for time-dependent contact Lagrangian systems. Our results are illustrated with several examples. In particular, we present the two-body problem with time-dependent friction, which could be interesting in celestial mechanics.