$ξ$-submanifold in the Euclidean space $\bbr^{m+p}$ is a natural extension of the concept of self-shrinker to the mean curvature flow in $\bbr^{m+p}$. It is also a generalization of the $λ$-hypersurface defined by Q.-M. Cheng et al to arbitrary codimensions. In this paper, some characterizations for $ξ$-submanifolds are established. First, it is shown that a submanifold in $\bbr^{m+p}$ is a $ξ$-submanifold if and only if its modified mean curvature is parallel when viewed as a submanifold in the Gaussian space $(\bbr^{m+p},e^{-\fr{|x|^2}{m}}\lagl\cdot,\cdot\ragl)$; Then, two weighted volume functionals $V_ξ$ and $\bar V_ξ$ are introduced and it is proved that $ξ$-submanifolds can be characterized as the critical points of these two functionals; Also, the corresponding second variation formulas are computed and the ($W$-)stability properties for $ξ$-submanifolds are systematically studied. In particular, it is proved that $m$-planes are the only properly immersed, complete $W$-stable $ξ$-submanifolds with flat normal bundle under a technical condition. It would be interesting if this additional restriction could be removed.
In this paper, we introduce and study the conformal mean curvature flow of submanifolds of higher codimension in the Euclidean space $\bbr^n$. This kind of flow is a special case of a general modified mean curvature flow which is of various origination. As the main result, we prove a blow-up theorem concluding that, under the conformal mean curvature flow in $\bbr^n$, the maximum of the square norm of the second fundamental form of any compact submanifold tends to infinity in finite time. Furthermore, by using the idea of Andrews and Baker for studying the mean curvature flow of submanifolds i…
The geometry of jets of submanifolds is studied, with special interest in the relationship with the calculus of variations. A new intrinsic geometric formulation of the variational problem on jets of submanifolds is given. Working examples are provided.
The objet of this paper is the study of variations of a functional whose integrant is the $σ_u$-curvature of closed submanifolds of arbitrary codimension in Riemannian manifolds.
The objet of this paper is the study of the variations of a functional whose integrant is the r-th weighted curvature on the hypersurface of a closed Riemannian manifold. Some applications to hypersurfaces of the Euclidean space and the unit round sphère are given.
In this paper, we establish the first variational formula and its Euler-Lagrange equation for the total $2p$-th mean curvature functional $\mathcal {M}_{2p}$ of a submanifold $M^n$ in a general Riemannian manifold $N^{n+m}$ for $p=0,1,...,[\frac{n}{2}]$. As an example, we prove that closed complex submanifolds in complex projective spaces are critical points of the functional $\mathcal {M}_{2p}$, called relatively $2p$-minimal submanifolds, for all $p$. At last, we discuss the relations between relatively $2p$-minimal submanifolds and austere submanifolds in real space forms, as well as a spec…
Systems of ordinary differential equations (or dynamical forms in Lagrangian mechanics), induced by embeddings of smooth fibered manifolds over one-dimensional basis, are considered in the class of variational equations. For a given non-variational system, conditions assuring variationality (the Helmholtz conditions) of the induced system with respect to a submanifold of a Euclidean space are studied, and the problem of existence of these "variational submanifolds" is formulated in general and solved for second-order systems. The variational sequence theory on sheaves of differential forms is …
We study the geometry of jets of submanifolds with special interest in the relationship with the calculus of variations. We give a new proof of the fact that higher order jets of submanifolds are affine bundles; as a by-product we obtain a new expression for the associated vector bundles. We use Green-Vinogradov formula to provide coordinate expressions for all variational forms, i.e., objects in the finite-order variational sequence on jets of submanifolds. Finally, we formulate the variational problem in the framework of jets of submanifolds by an intrinsic geometric language, and connect it…
We prove that every non-degenerate minimal submanifold of codimension two can be obtained as the energy concentration set of a family of critical maps for the (rescaled) Ginzburg-Landau functional. The proof is purely variational, and follows the strategy laid out by Jerrard and Sternberg, extending a recent result for geodesics by Colinet-Jerrard-Sternberg. The same proof applies also to the $U(1)$-Yang-Mills-Higgs and to the Allen-Cahn-Hilliard energies.
A setting for global variational geometry on Grassmann fibrations is presented. The integral variational functionals for finite dimensional immersed submanifolds are studied by means of the fundamental Lepage equivalent of a homogeneous Lagrangian, which can be regarded as a generalization of the well-known Hilbert form in the classical mechanics. Prolongations of immersions, diffeomorphisms and vector fields to the Grassmann fibrations are introduced as geometric tools for the variations of immersions. The first infinitesimal variation formula together with its consequences, the Euler-Lagrang…
We prove an equivariant implicit function theorem for variational problems that are invariant under a varying symmetry group (corresponding to a bundle of Lie groups). Motivated by applications to families of geometric variational problems lacking regularity, several non-smooth extensions of the result are discussed. Among such applications is the submanifold problem of deforming the ambient metric preserving a given variational property of a prescribed family of submanifolds, e.g., constant mean curvature, up to the action of the corresponding ambient isometry groups.
We consider in this paper an area functional defined on submanifolds of fixed degree immersed into a graded manifold equipped with a Riemannian metric. Since the expression of this area depends on the degree, not all variations are admissible. It turns out that the associated variational vector fields must satisfy a system of partial differential equations of first order on the submanifold. Moreover, given a vector field solution of this system, we provide a sufficient condition that guarantees the possibility of deforming the original submanifold by variations preserving its degree. As in the…
In this paper we obtain an existence theorem for normal geodesics joining two given submanifolds in a globally hyperbolic stationary spacetime. The proof is based on both variational and geometric arguments involving the causal structure of the spacetime, the completeness of suitable Finsler metrics associated to it and some basic properties of a submersion. By this interaction, unlike previous results on the topic, also non--spacelike submanifolds can be handled.
Manifold-valued data naturally arises in medical imaging. In cognitive neuroscience, for instance, brain connectomes base the analysis of coactivation patterns between different brain regions on the analysis of the correlations of their functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) time series - an object thus constrained by construction to belong to the manifold of symmetric positive definite matrices. One of the challenges that naturally arises consists of finding a lower-dimensional subspace for representing such manifold-valued data. Traditional techniques, like principal component analysis…
We study the local geometry of the space of horizontal curves with endpoints freely varying in two given submanifolds $\mathcal P$ and $\mathcal Q$ of a manifold $\mathcal M$ endowed with a distribution $\mathcal D\subset T\M$. We give a different proof, that holds in a more general context, of a result by Bismut (Large Deviations and the Malliavin Calculus, Birkhauser, 1984) stating that the normal extremizers that are not abnormal are critical points of the sub-Riemannian action functional. We use the Lagrangian multipliers method in a Hilbert manifold setting, which leads to a characterizat…
A conformally invariant generalization of the Willmore energy for compact immersed submanifolds of even dimension in a Riemannian manifold is derived and studied. The energy arises as the coefficient of the log term in the renormalized area expansion of a minimal submanifold in a Poincare-Einstein space with prescribed boundary at infinity. Its first variation is identified as the obstruction to smoothness of the minimal submanifold. The energy is explicitly identified for the case of submanifolds of dimension four. Variational properties of this four-dimensional energy are studied in detail w…
J. Eells and L. Lemaire introduced k-harmonic maps, and Wang Shaobo showed the first variational formula. When, k=2, it is called biharmonic maps (2-harmonic maps). There have been extensive studies in the area. In this paper, we consider the relationship between biharmonic maps and k-harmonic maps, and show non-existence theorem of 3-harmonic maps. We also give the definition of k-harmonic submanifolds of Euclidean spaces, and study k-harmonic curve in Euclidean spaces. Futhermore, we give a conjecture for k-harmonic submanifolds of Euclidean spaces.
In this paper, we generalize several results for the Hamiltonian stability and the mean curvature flow of Lagrangian submanifolds in a Kähler-Einstein manifold to more general Kähler manifolds including a Fano manifold equipped with a Kähler form $ω\in 2πc_1(M)$ by using the methodology proposed by T. Behrndt. Namely, we first consider a weighted measure on a Lagrangian submanifold $L$ in a Kähler manifold $M$ and investigate the variational problem of $L$ for the weighted volume functional. We call a stationary point of the weighted volume functional $f$-minimal, and define the notion of Hami…
We propose a new method for the numerical computation of the cut locus of a compact submanifold of $\mathbb{R}^3$ without boundary. This method is based on a convex variational problem with conic constraints, with proven convergence. We illustrate the versatility of our approach by the approximation of Voronoi cells on embedded surfaces of $\mathbb{R}^3$.
We study underlying geometric structures for integral variational functionals, depending on submanifolds of a given manifold. Applications include (first order) variational functionals of Finsler and areal geometries with integrand the Hilbert 1-form, and admit immediate extensions to higher-order functionals.
We survey - by means of 20 examples - the concept of varifold, as generalised submanifold, with emphasis on regularity of integral varifolds with mean curvature, while keeping prerequisites to a minimum. Integral varifolds are the natural language for studying the variational theory of the area integrand if one considers, for instance, existence or regularity of stationary (or, stable) surfaces of dimension at least three, or the limiting behaviour of sequences of smooth submanifolds under area and mean curvature bounds.
We consider a variational problem for submanifolds Q $\subset$ M with nonempty boundary $\partial$Q = K. We propose the definition that the boundary K of any critical point Q have constant mean curvature, which seems to be a new perspective when dim Q \textless{} dim M . We then construct small nearly-spherical solutions of this higher codimension CMC prob-lem; these concentrate near the critical points of a certain curvature function.
We construct examples of shrinkers and expanders for Lagrangian mean curvature flows. These examples are Hamiltonian stationary and asymptotic to the union of two Hamiltonian stationary cones found by Schoen and Wolfson. The Schoen-Wolfson cones $C_{p,q}$ are obstructions to the existence problems of special Lagrangians or Lagrangian minimal surfaces in the variational approach. It is known that these cone singularities cannot be resolved by any smooth oriented Lagrangian submanifolds. The shrinkers and expanders that we found can be glued together to yield solutions of the Brakke motion-a wea…
Some model reduction techniques for multiple time-scale dynamical systems make use of the identification of low dimensional slow invariant attracting manifolds (SIAM) in order to reduce the dimensionality of the phase space by restriction to the slow flow. The focus of this work is on a proposition and discussion of a general viewpoint using differential geometric concepts for submanifolds to deal with slow invariant manifolds in an extended phase space. The motivation is a coordinate independent formulation of the manifold properties and its characterization problem treating the manifold as i…
