Differentiability properties of the minimal average action

Given aZ ⁿ⁺¹-periodic variational principle onR ⁿ⁺¹ we look for solutionsu:R ⁿ R minimizing the variational integral with respect to compactly supported variations. To every vector R ⁿ we consider a subset of solutions which have an average slope when averaging overR ⁿ. The minimal average action A() is defined by the average value of the variational integral given by a solution with average slope . Our main result is:A is differentiable at if and only if the set is totally ordered (in the natural sense). In case that is not totally ordered,A is differentiable at in some direction R ⁿ{0} if and only if is orthogonal to the subspace defined by the rational dependency of . Assuming that the i^th component of is rational with denominator sⁱ N in lowest terms, we show: The difference of right- and left-sided derivative in the i^th standard unit direction is bounded by const · .