Pseudo-Riemannian metrics on closed surfaces whose geodesic flows admit nontrivial integrals quadratic in momenta, and proof of the projective Obata conjecture for two-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metrics (Q763979): Difference between revisions

The problem of finding all two-dimensional local Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian manifolds that admit an integral quadratic in the momenta (in addition to the Hamiltonian) is classical: The quadratic integral is in Liouville form (yielding additive separation of variables in the Hamilton-Jacobi equation) or in Lie form. For closed two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, i.e., metric signature \((-,-)\), the problem has been treated within the past 30 years by Kolokoltsov and by Kiyohara. This paper solves the problem of finding all closed two-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifolds, i.e., metric signature \((+,-)\), that admit an integral linear or quadratic in the momenta (other than the Hamiltonian). Topologically, these spaces are homeomorphic to the torus or to the Klein bottle. For the torus the author shows that all metrics admitting a quadratic integral but not a linear integral can be put in a global Liouville form, and he finds a similar result for the Klein bottle. For the case of linear integrals (the most complicated part of the proof) he finds Lie (or Jordan block) form on the torus. The proof of completeness of the basic classification is very technical, but reasonably easy to follow. As an application of his basic result he obtains a solution of the Beltrami problem for closed two-manifolds of signature \((+,-)\): Describe all pairs of geodesically equivalent metrics. A second application is to describe all closed surfaces that admit 3 independent quadratic integrals (including the Hamiltonian), i.e., are second order superintegrable. He shows that such manifolds must have constant curvature, and if the signature is \((+,-)\) then the space is flat. The final application is to prove the Obata conjecture for two-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metrics: Suppose a two-torus is equipped with a metric of signature \((+,-)\) and a connected Lie group \(G\) acts on the torus by projective transformations. Then \(G\) acts by isometries.