A fundamental question in Riemannian geometry is to find canonical metrics on a given smooth manifold. In the 1980s, R. Hamilton proposed an approach to this question based on parabolic partial differential equations. The goal is to start from a given initial metric and deform it to a canonical metric by means of an evolution equation. There are various natural evolution equations for Riemannian metrics, including the Ricci flow and the conformal Yamabe flow. In this survey, we discuss the global behavior of the solutions to these equations. In particular, we describe how these techniques can be used to prove the Differentiable Sphere Theorem.
This article is based on the Takagi Lectures delivered by the author at the Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University, on June 4, 2011.
In the paper, we give a Schur-Toponogov theorem in Riemannian geometry, which not only generalizes Schur's and Toponogov's theorem but also indicates their relation. Inspired by its proof, we also supply a new proof of Toponogov's theorem (in the large) in Alexandrov geometry.
Shape analysis and compuational anatomy both make use of sophisticated tools from infinite-dimensional differential manifolds and Riemannian geometry on spaces of functions. While comprehensive references for the mathematical foundations exist, it is sometimes difficult to gain an overview how differential geometry and functional analysis interact in a given problem. This paper aims to provide a roadmap to the unitiated to the world of infinite-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, spaces of mappings and Sobolev metrics: all tools used in computational anatomy and shape analysis.
In this paper, we define and study sub-Riemannian structures on Banach manifolds. We obtain extensions of the Chow-Rashevski theorem for exact controllability, and give conditions for the existence of a Hamiltonian geodesic flow despite the lack of a Pontryagin Maximum Principle in the infinite dimensional setting.
Using vertical and complete lifts, any left invariant Riemannian metric on a Lie group induces a left invariant Riemannian metric on the tangent Lie group. In the present article we study the Riemannian geometry of tangent bundle of two families of Lie groups. The first one is the family of special Lie groups considered by J. Milnor and the second one is the class of Lie groups with one-dimensional commutator groups. The Levi-Civita connection, sectional and Ricci curvatures have been investigated.
We discover a fundamental exterior differential system of Riemannian geometry; indeed, an intrinsic and invariant global system of differential forms of degree $n$ associated to any given oriented Riemannian manifold $M$ of dimension $n+1$. The framework is that of the tangent sphere bundle of $M$. We generalise to a Riemannian setting some results from the theory of hypersurfaces in flat Euclidean space. We give new applications and examples of the associated Euler-Lagrange differential systems.
There are many equivalent definitions of Riemannian geodesics. They are naturally generalised to sub-Riemannian manifold, but become non-equivalent. We give a review of different definitions of geodesics of a sub-Riemannian manifold and interrelation between them. We recall three variational definitions of geodesics as (locally) shortest curves (Euler-Lagrange, Pontyagin and Hamilton) and three definitions of geodesics as straightest curves (d'Alembert , Levi-Civita-Schouten and Cartan-Tanaka ), used in nonholonomic mechanics and discuss their interrelations. We consider a big class of sub-Rie…
Each sub-Riemannian geometry with bracket generating distribution enjoys a background structure determined by the distribution itself. At the same time, those geometries with constant sub-Riemannian symbols determine a unique Cartan connection leading to their principal invariants. We provide cohomological description of the structure of these curvature invariants in the cases where the background structure is one of the parabolic geometries. As an illustration, constant curvature models are discussed for certain sub-Riemannian geometries.
The recently introduced Lipschitz-Killing curvature measures on pseudo-Riemannian manifolds satisfy a Weyl principle, i.e. are invariant under isometric embeddings. We show that they are uniquely characterized by this property. We apply this characterization to prove a Künneth-type formula for Lipschitz-Killing curvature measures, and to classify the invariant generalized valuations and curvature measures on all isotropic pseudo-Riemannian space forms.
We obtain sharp quantitative Laplacian upper and lower estimates under no assumption on curvatures. As a result, we derive quantitative Laplacian, area and volume comparison theorems for tubes in Riemannian and Kähler manifolds under weak integral curvature assumptions. We also give some applications, such as a general Bonnet-Myers theorem and Cheng's eigenvalue estimate under weak integral curvature assumptions.
In this paper, a Riemannian geometry of noncommutative super surfaces is developed which generalizes [4] to the super case. The notions of metric and connections on such noncommutative super surfaces are introduced and it is shown that the connections are metric-compatible and have zero torsion when the super metric is symmetric, giving rise to the corresponding super Riemann curvature. The latter also satisfies the noncommutative super analogue of the first and second Bianchi identities. We also give some examples and study them in details.
A few formulas and theorems for statistical structures are proved. They deal with various curvatures as well as with metric properties of the cubic form or its covariant derivative. Some of them generalize formulas and theorems known in the case of Lagrangian submanifolds or affine hypersurfaces.
We introduce a new approach for computing curvature of sub-Riemannian manifolds. Curvature is here meant as symplectic invariants of Jacobi curves of geodesics, as introduced by Zelenko and Li. We describe how they can be expressed using a compatible affine connection and induced tensors, without any restriction on our sub-Riemannian manifold or the choice of connection. In particular, we obtain a universal Bonnet-Myers theorem of Riemannian type. We also give universal formulas for the canonical horizontal frame along each geodesic and an algorithm for computing the curvature in general. Seve…
An almost Golden Riemannian structure $(φ,g)$ on a manifold is given by a tensor field $φ$ of type (1,1) satisfying the Golden section relation $φ^{2}=φ+1$, and a pure Riemannian metric $g$, i.e., a metric satisfying $g(φX,Y)=g(X,φY)$. We study connections adapted to such a structure, finding two of them, the first canonical and the well adapted, which measure the integrability of $φ$ and the integrability of the $G$-structure corresponding to $(φ,g)$.
We study the small-time asymptotics of the relative heat content for submanifolds in sub-Riemannian geometry. First, we prove the existence of a smooth tubular neighborhood for submanifolds of any codimension, assuming they do not have characteristic points. Next, we propose a definition of relative heat content for submanifolds of codimension $k\geq 1$ and we build an approximation of this quantity, via smooth tubular neighborhoods. Finally, we show that this approximation fails to recover the asymptotic expansion of the relative heat content of the submanifold, by studying an explicit exampl…
We construct a canonically defined affine connection in sub-Riemannian contact geometry. Our method mimics that of the Levi-Civita connection in Riemannian geometry. We compare it with the Tanaka-Webster connection in the three-dimensional case.
We consider sub-Riemannian spaces admitting an isometry group that is maximal in the sense that any linear isometry between the horizontal tangent spaces is realized by a global isometry. We will show that these spaces have a canonical choice of partial connection on their horizontal bundle, which is determined by isometries and generalizes the Levi-Civita connection for the special case of Riemannian model spaces. The number of invariants needed to describe model spaces with the same tangent cone is in general greater than one, and these invariants are not necessarily related to the holonomy …
