Motivated by the results of B. Berndtsson, in this memoir we use the new estimates developed by W. He to extend a theorem of the second author on the existence of weak $C^{1,1}$ geodesics between two smooth non-degenerate Kähler potentials to the case where the metrics on the end points may have singularities on some analytic set and may be positive semi-definite.
We construct all Finsler metrics on the two-sphere for which geodesics are circles and show that any (reversible) path geometry on a two-dimensional manifold is locally the system of geodesics of a Finsler metric.
This paper is concerned with the existence of conformal metrics of the disk with prescribed Gaussian and geodesic curvatures. Being more specific, given nonnegative smooth functions $K: \overline{\mathbb{D}} \to \mathbb{R}$ and $h: \partial \mathbb{D} \to \mathbb{R}$, we consider the problem of finding a conformal metric realizing $K$ and $h$ as Gaussian and geodesic curvatures, respectively. This is the natural analogue of the classical Nirenberg problem posed on the disk. As we shall see, both curvatures play a role in the existence of solutions. Indeed we are able to give existence results …
We obtain simple characterizations of the connected components of the space of closed curves on the 2-sphere whose geodesic curvatures are constrained to lie in an open interval $(κ_1,κ_2)$, in terms of $κ_1$ and $κ_2$. Many results concerning the topology of these spaces are established. In particular, we determine the homeomorphism class of some of these components.
We apply a local systolic-diastolic inequality for contact forms and odd-symplectic forms on three-manifolds to bound the magnetic length of closed curves with prescribed geodesic curvature (also known as magnetic geodesics) on an oriented closed surface. Our results hold when the prescribed curvature is either close to a Zoll one or large enough.
We prove a sharp area estimate for minimal submanifolds that pass through a prescribed point in a geodesic ball in hyperbolic space, in any dimension and codimension. In certain cases, we also prove the corresponding estimate in the sphere. Our estimates are analogous to those of Brendle and Hung in the Euclidean setting.
We give existence results for simple closed curves with prescribed geodesic curvature on $S^{2}$, which correspond to periodic orbits of a charge in a magnetic field.
We prove that a critical metric of the volume functional on a $4$-dimensional compact manifold with boundary satisfying a second-order vanishing condition on the Weyl tensor must be isometric to a geodesic ball in a simply connected space form $\mathbb{R}^{4}$, $\mathbb{H}^{4}$ or $\mathbb{S}^{4}.$ Moreover, we provide an integral curvature estimate involving the Yamabe constant for critical metrics of the volume functional, which allows us to get a rigidity result for such critical metrics.
We prove prime geodesic theorems counting primitive closed geodesics on a compact hyperbolic 3-manifold with length and holonomy in prescribed intervals, which are allowed to shrink. Our results imply effective equidistribution of holonomy and have both the rate of shrinking and the strength of the error term fully symmetric in length and holonomy.
Let $C_{k_1}^{k_2}$ denote the set of all closed curves of class $C^r$ on the sphere $S^2$ whose geodesic curvatures are restricted to lie in $(k_1,k_2)$, furnished with the $C^r$ topology (for some $r >= 2$ and possibly infinite $k_1 < k_2$). In 1970, J. Little proved that the space $C_0^{+\infty}$ of closed curves having positive geodesic curvature has three connected components. Let $r_i = arccot k_i$ (i = 1, 2). We show that $C_{k_1}^{k_2}$ has n connected components $C_1, ..., C_n$, where n is the greatest integer smaller than or equal to $π/(r_1-r_2) + 1$, and $C_j$ contains circles trav…
We study that the $n-$graphs defining by smooth map $f:\Om\subset \ir{n}\to \ir{m}, m\ge 2,$ in $\ir{m+n}$ of the prescribed mean curvature and the Gauss image. We derive the interior curvature estimates $$\sup_{D_R(x)}|B|^2\le\f{C}{R^2}$$ under the dimension limitations and the Gauss image restrictions. If there is no dimension limitation we obtain $$\sup_{D_R(x)}|B|^2\le C R^{-a}\sup_{D_{2R}(x)}(2-\De_f)^{-(\f{3}{2}+\f{1}{s})}, \qquad s=\min(m, n)$$ with $a<1$ under the condition $$\De_f=[\text{det}(\de_{ij}+\sum_\a\pd{f^\a}{x^i}\pd{f^\a}{x^j})]^{\f{1}{2}}<2.$$ If the image under the Gauss m…
We study conformal metrics with prescribed Gaussian curvature on surfaces with conical singularities and geodesic boundary in supercritical regimes. Exploiting a variational argument, we derive a general existence result for surfaces with at least two boundary components. This seems to be the first result in this setting. Moreover, we allow to have conical singularities with both positive and negative orders, that is cone angles both less and grater than $2π$.
We use PDE methods as developed for the Liouville equation to study the existence of conformal metrics with prescribed singularities on surfaces with boundary, the boundary condition being constant geodesic curvature. Our first result shows that a disk with two corners admits a conformal metric with constant Gauss curvature and constant geodesic curvature on its boundary if and only if the two corners have the same angle. In fact, we can classify all the solutions in a more general situation, that of the 2-sphere cut by two planes.
In this follow up work to [45, 33, 32, 46] we introduce and study a notion of geodesic stability restricted to rays with prescribed singularity types. A number of notions of interest fit into this framework, in particular algebraic- and transcendental K-polystability, equivariant K-polystability, and the geodesic K-polystability notion introduced by the author in [46]. We provide a partial comparison of the above notions, and show equivalence of some of these notions provided that the underlying manifold satisfies a certain 'weak cscK' condition. As an application this proves K-polystability o…
We establish exponential mixing for the geodesic flow $φ_t\colon T^1S\to T^1S$ of an incomplete, negatively curved surface $S$ with cusp-like singularities of a prescribed order. As a consequence, we obtain that the Weil-Petersson flows for the moduli spaces ${\mathcal M}_{1,1}$ and ${\mathcal M}_{0,4}$ are exponentially mixing, in sharp contrast to the flows for ${\mathcal M}_{g,n}$ with $3g-3+n>1$, which fail to be rapidly mixing. In the proof, we present a new method of analyzing invariant foliations for hyperbolic flows with singularities, based on changing the Riemannian metric on the pha…
We study the shortest geodesics on flat cone spheres, i.e. flat metrics on the sphere with conical singularities. The length of the shortest geodesic between two singular points can be treated as a function on the moduli space of flat cone spheres with prescribed angle defects. We prove a recurrent relation on the distribution of this function with respect to Thurston's volume form on the moduli space.
In this article, we give results of prescribing scalar and mean curvature functions for metrics either pointwise conformal or conformally equivalent to a Riemannian metric that is equipped on a compact manifold with boundary, with dimensions at least $ 3 $. The results are classified by the sign of the first eigenvalue of the conformal Laplacian. This leads to a "Trichotomy Theorem" in terms of both scalar and mean curvature functions, which is a full extension of the "Trichotomy Theorem" given by Kazdan and Warner. We also discuss prescribing Gauss and geodesic curvature problems on compact R…
In this paper we study K-polystability of arbitrary (possibly non-projective) compact Kähler manifolds admitting holomorphic vector fields. As a main result, we show that existence of a constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) metric implies 'geodesic K-polystability', in a sense that is expected to be equivalent to K-polystability in general. In particular, in the spirit of an expectation of Chen-Tang we show that geodesic K-polystability implies algebraic K-polystability for polarized manifolds. Hence our main result recovers a possibly stronger version of results of Berman-Darvas-Lu in this …
In this paper we prove classification results to elliptic fully nonlinear conformal equations on certain subdomains of the sphere with prescribed constant mean curvature on its boundary. Such subdomains are the hemisphere (or a geodesic ball on $\mathbb{S}^n$) of dimension $n\geq 2$ with prescribed constant mean curvature on its boundary, and annular domains with minimal boundary. Our results extend the classifications of Escobar in \cite{E0} when $n\geq 3$, and Hang-Wang in \cite{HaWa} and Jimenez in \cite{J} when $n=2$.
The problem of immersing a simply connected surface with a prescribed shape operator is discussed. From classical and more recent work, it is known that, aside from some special degenerate cases, such as when the shape operator can be realized by a surface with one family of principal curves being geodesic, the space of such realizations is a convex set in an affine space of dimension at most 3. The cases where this maximum dimension of realizability is achieved have been classified and it is known that there are two such families of shape operators, one depending essentially on three arbitrar…
Let L be the manifold of all (unparametrized) oriented lines of R^3. We study the controllability of the control system in L given by the condition that a curve in L describes at each instant, at the infinitesimal level, an helicoid with prescribed angular speed alpha. Actually, we pose the analogous more general problem by means of a control system on the manifold G_kappa of all the oriented complete geodesics of the three dimensional space form of curvature kappa: R^3 for kappa = 0, S^3 for kappa = 1 and hyperbolic 3-space for kappa = -1. We obtain that the system is controllable if and only…
We study the volume functional on the space of constant scalar curvature metrics with a prescribed boundary metric. We derive a sufficient and necessary condition for a metric to be a critical point, and show that the only domains in space forms, on which the standard metrics are critical points, are geodesic balls. In the zero scalar curvature case, assuming the boundary can be isometrically embedded in the Euclidean space as a compact strictly convex hypersurface, we show that the volume of a critical point is always no less than the Euclidean volume bounded by the isometric embedding of the…
We consider quasifuchsian manifolds with "particles", i.e., cone singularities of fixed angle less than $π$ going from one connected component of the boundary at infinity to the other. Each connected component of the boundary at infinity is then endowed with a conformal structure marked by the endpoints of the particles. We prove that this defines a homeomorphism from the space of quasifuchsian metrics with $n$ particles (of fixed angle) and the product of two copies of the Teichmüller space of a surface with $n$ marked points. This is analoguous to the Bers theorem in the non-singular case. Q…