A Direct Construction Method for Conservation Laws of Partial Differential
Equations

Stephen C Anco and George W Bluman*, Department of Mathematics,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC Canada V6T 1Z2

We present a method to obtain all local conservation laws for any given system
of partial differential equations.  This method does not depend on the system
having a Lagrangian formulation, in contrast to Noether's theorem which only
applies to Lagrangian (i.e., self-adjoint) systems.  Examples will be given.
A preliminary version of this work recently appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett.