Geometric invariants of fanning curves (Q1012155)

The aim of the paper is to study the geometry of an important class of generic curves in the Grassmann manifolds of \(n\)-dimensional subspaces and Lagrangian subspaces of \(\mathbb R^{2n}\) under the action of the linear and linear symplectic group. In particular, the authors are interested in the following class of curves: A smooth curve \(\ell(t)\) of \(n\)-dimensional subspaces of \(\mathbb R^{2n}\) is said to be fanning if at each time \(t\) the tangent vector \(\dot\ell(t)\) is an invertible linear map from \(\ell(t)\) to the quotient space \(\mathbb R^{2n}/\ell(t)\). The authors then construct the fundamental endomorphism \(F(t)\) associated with the fanning curve \(\ell\), which is some linear transformation from \(\mathbb R^{2n}\) to itself. It is proved that the geometric invariants of fanning curves in the Grassmannian of \(n\)-dimensional subspaces of \(\mathbb R^{2n}\) arise from the fundamentasl endomorphism \(F\) and its first and second order derivatives. It is shown that such geometric constructions correspond to the vertical endomorphism, connection and curvature (Jacobi endomorphism) introduced by Klein, Voutier, Grifone and Foulon in their study of connections for semi-sprays and Finsler metrics.