Curve-straightening in closed Euclidean submanifolds (Q1814253)

The curve straightening flow is the flow in the negative directions of the gradient vector field associated with the functional \(\int k^ 2ds\), where \(k\) is the geodesic curvature. The motivating application for this flow is the possibility of using it to find closed geodesics. In the paper it is investigated by methods of Hilbert manifold theory. Precisely, the space of closed curves in closed Euclidean submanifolds is considered as submanifolds of certain Hilbert manifolds representing all curves. It is shown the existence of a particular set of functionals which have the following properties: 1) The directional derivatives of these functionals may be computed by solving an initial value problem for a system of ordinary differential equations; 2) The gradients may be effectively computed; 3) The gradients span the space normal to the tangent space of the space of closed curves and it is possible to compute the projection onto this tangent space. This gives an algorithm for finding critical points in the space of closed curves. This method is applied to the gradient of the functional \(\int k^ 2ds\). The paper concludes by deriving the second variation formula for \(\int(k^ 2+\lambda)ds\) along closed geodesics.