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 with the variational sequence. Detailed comparison with literature is provided throughout the paper.
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…
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.
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 …
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…
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.
We consider CR submersive mappings between generic submanifolds in complex space. We show that, under suitable conditions on the manifolds, there is an integer k such that any jet of the CR mapping at a given point is a rational function of its k-jet at that point. As a consequence, it is shown that the stability group of a (suitably nondegenerate) real-analytic generic submanifold is a real algebraic Lie group. Moreover, it is shown that a formal equivalence between two such real-analytic submanifolds is necessarily convergent.
$ξ$-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 fu…
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…
We show how the double vector bundle structure of the manifold of double velocities, with its submanifolds of holonomic and semiholonomic double velocities, is mirrored by a structure of holonomic and semiholonomic subgroups in the principal prolongation of the first jet group. We use the actions of these groups to construct holonomic and semiholonomic submanifolds in the manifold of double contact elements, and show that these give rise to affine bundles where a semiholonomic element has well-defined holonomic and curvature components.
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 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.
The connected components of the zero set of any conformal vector field $v$, in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ of arbitrary signature, are of two types, which may be called `essential' and `nonessential'. The former consist of points at which $v$ is essential, that is, cannot be turned into a Killing field by a local conformal change of the metric. In a component of the latter type, points at which $v$ is nonessential form a relatively-open dense subset that is at the same time a totally umbilical submanifold of $(M,g)$. An essential component is always a null totally geodesic submanifold…
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.
A Finsler geometry may be understood as a homogeneous variational problem, where the Finsler function is the Lagrangian. The extremals in Finsler geometry are curves, but in more general variational problems we might consider extremal submanifolds of dimension $m$. In this minicourse we discuss these problems from a geometric point of view.
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 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…
We give an abstract formulation of the formal theory partial differential equations (PDEs) in synthetic differential geometry, one that would seamlessly generalize the traditional theory to a range of enhanced contexts, such as super-geometry, higher (stacky) differential geometry, or even a combination of both. A motivation for such a level of generality is the eventual goal of solving the open problem of covariant geometric pre-quantization of locally variational field theories, which may include fermions and (higher) gauge fields. (abridged)
Minimal surfaces are among the most natural objects in Differential Geometry, and have been studied for the past 250 years ever since the pioneering work of Lagrange. The subject is characterized by a profound beauty, but perhaps even more remarkably, minimal surfaces (or minimal submanifolds) have encountered striking applications in other fields, like three-dimensional topology, mathematical physics, conformal geometry, among others. Even though it has been the subject of intense activity, many basic open problems still remain. In this lecture we will survey recent advances in this area and …
We outline the notions and concepts of the calculus of variational multivectors within the Poisson formalism over the spaces of infinite jets of mappings from commutative (non)graded smooth manifolds to the factors of noncommutative associative algebras over the equivalence under cyclic permutations of the letters in the associative words. We state the basic properties of the variational Schouten bracket and derive an interesting criterion for (non)commutative differential operators to be Hamiltonian (and thus determine the (non)commutative Poisson structures). We place the noncommutative jet-…
In this paper we derive the symplectic framework for field theories defined by higher-order Lagrangians. The construction is based on the symplectic reduction of suitable spaces of iterated jets. The possibility of reducing a higher-order system of PDEs to a constrained first-order one, the symplectic structures naturally arising in the dynamics of a first-order Lagrangian theory, and the importance of the Poincaré-Cartan form for variational problems, are all well-established facts. However, their adequate combination corresponding to higher-order theories is missing in the literature. Here w…
Given a Hermitian line bundle $L\to M$ over a closed, oriented Riemannian manifold $M$, we study the asymptotic behavior, as $ε\to 0$, of couples $(u_ε,\nabla_ε)$ critical for the rescalings \begin{align*} &E_ε(u,\nabla)=\int_M\Big(|\nabla u|^2+ε^2|F_\nabla|^2+\frac{1}{4ε^2}(1-|u|^2)^2\Big) \end{align*} of the self-dual Yang-Mills-Higgs energy, where $u$ is a section of $L$ and $\nabla$ is a Hermitian connection on $L$ with curvature $F_{\nabla}$. Under the natural assumption $\limsup_{ε\to 0}E_ε(u_ε,\nabla_ε)<\infty$, we show that the energy measures converge subsequentially to (the weight me…
We consider solutions of Lagrangian variational problems with linear constraints on the derivative. These solutions are given by curves $γ$ in a differentiable manifold $M$ that are everywhere tangent to a smooth distribution $\mathcal D$ on $M$; such curves are called horizontal. We study the manifold structure of the set $Ω_{P,Q}(M,\mathcal D)$ of horizontal curves that join two submanifolds $P$ and $Q$ of $M$. We consider an action functional $\mathcal L$ defined on $Ω_{P,Q}(M,\mathcal D)$ associated to a time-dependent Lagrangian defined on $\mathcal D$. If the Lagrangian satisfies a suita…
In this paper we define and study pseudoholomorphic vector bundles structures, particular cases of which are tangent and normal bundle almost complex structures. These are intrinsically related to the Gromov D-operator. As an application we deduce normal forms of 1-jets of almost complex structures along a submanifold. In dimension four we relate these normal forms to the problem of pseudoholomorphic foliation of a neighborhood of a curve and the question of non-deformation and persistence of pseudoholomorphic curves.
Motivated by the geometric theory of differential equations and the variational approach to the equivalence problem for geometric structures on manifolds, we consider the problem of equivalence for distributions with fixed submanifolds of flags on each fiber. We call them flag structures. The construction of the canonical frames for these structures can be given in the two prolongation steps: the first step, based on our previous works, gives the canonical bundle of moving frames for the fixed submanifolds of flags on each fiber and the second step consists of the prolongation of the bundle ob…
An $(r,n)$-velocity is an $r$-jet with source at $0 \in \R^n$, and target in a manifold $Y$. An $(r,n)$-velocity is said to be regular, if it has a representative which is an immersion at $0 \in \R^{n}$. The manifold $T^{r}_{n}Y$ of $(r,n)$-velocities as well as its open, $L^{r}_{n}$-invariant, dense submanifold $\Imm T^{r}_{n}Y$ of regular $(r,n)$-velocities, are endowed with a natural action of the differential group $L^{r}_{n}$ of invertible $r$-jets with source and target $0 \in \R^{n}$. In this paper, we describe all continuous, $L^{r}_{n}$-invariant, real-valued functions on $T^{r}_{n}Y$…
The geometrical structure known as Tulczyjew triple has been used with success in analytical mechanics and first order field theory to describe a wide range of physical systems including Lagrangian/Hamiltonian systems with constraints and/or sources, or with singular Lagrangian. Starting from the first principles of the variational calculus we derive Tulczyjew triples for classical field theories of arbitrary high order, i.e. depending on arbitrary high derivatives of the fields. A first triple appears as the result of considering higher order theories as first order ones with configurations b…
