Potential conservation laws

We prove that potential conservation laws have characteristics depending only on local variables if and only if they are induced by local conservation laws. Therefore, characteristics of pure potential conservation laws have to essentially depend on potential variables. This statement provides a significant generalization of results of the recent paper by Bluman et al. [J. Math. Phys. 47, 113505 (2006)]. Moreover, we present extensions to gauged potential systems, Abelian and general coverings, and general foliated systems of differential equations. An example illustrating possible applications of these results is given. A special version of the Hadamard lemma for fiber bundles and the notions of weighted jet spaces are proposed as new tools for the investigation of potential conservation laws