Affine Poisson structures

We establish a one-to-one correspondence between the set of all equivalence classes of affine Poisson structures (defined on the dual of a finite dimensional Lie algebra) and the set of all equivalence classes of central extensions of the Lie algebra by ℝ. We characterize all the affine Poisson structures defined on the duals of some lower dimensional Lie algebras. It is shown that under a certain condition every Poisson structure locally looks like an affine Poisson structure. As an application, we show the role played by affine Poisson structures in mechanics. Finally, we prove some involution theorems.