Vanishing geodesic distance for right-invariant Sobolev metrics on diffeomorphism groups (Q2417920)

The article studies the geodesic distance induced by right-invariant (weak) Riemannian metrics of Sobolev-type on the group of compactly supported diffeomorphism of a Riemannian manifold \(M\) of bounded geometry. The main result is the vanishing of the geodesic distance of a Sobolev metric of type \(W^{s,p}\) if \(s < \min \{1, \dim M /p)\). Combined with results from the literature, the geodesic distance vanishes (apart from some special cases which are still open) only if the above inequality is satisfied. In particular, this disproves a conjecture made in [\textit{M. Bauer} et al., ibid. 44, No. 1, 5--21 (2013; Zbl 1288.35415); ibid. 44, No. 4, 361--368 (2013; Zbl 1290.35192)]. In a bit more detail, the authors first construct a diffeomorphism on Euclidean space whose \(W^{s,p}\)-distance vanishes (animations exhibiting the geometric construction techniques can be found on the authors webpages). Then they transplant it to a diffeomorphism on a manifold of bounded geometry with vanishing distance. Exploiting that the diffeomorphism group is a simple group, this then yields the desired result.