Sobolev metrics on shape space of surfaces (Q420291)

Consider the space of all immersions of a smooth compact manifold \(M\) into a smooth (finite dimensional) manifold \(N\) with a given Riemannian metric \(\overline{g}\), modulo the group of diffeomorphisms \(\mathrm{Diff}(M)\). This quotient space \(B_i=\mathrm{Imm}(M,N)/\mathrm{Diff}(M)\), with a given (weak) Riemannian metric, is the subject of study of this paper, with emphasis on Sobolev-type metrics. We describe this later case with some detail: given an elliptic pseudo differential operator \(P:T\mathrm{Imm}\to T\mathrm{Imm}\) which is symmetric and positive with respect to the \(H^0\)-metric on \(\mathrm{Imm}\), and invariant under the group action of \(\mathrm{Diff}(M)\) (a special and relevant case is the operator \(P=1+\Delta^p\), where \(\Delta\) is the Bochner Laplacian, \(\Delta \cdot= -Tr^g(\nabla^2 \cdot)\), and \(g\) is the metric induced on \(M\) by \(f\in \mathrm{Imm}(M,N)\)), the metric is given by \(G^P_f(h,k)=\int_M \overline{g}(P_fh,k) \mathrm{vol}(g)\), for \(f\in \mathrm{Imm}(M,N)\) and \(h,k\in T_f\mathrm{Imm}\). For these metrics, the authors compute variational formulas, establish the geodesic equations, and moreover they show that these equations are well-posed and the exponential map is a diffeomorphism from a neighbourhood of the zero section onto a neighbourhood of the diagonal of \(\mathrm{Imm}\times \mathrm{Imm}\) (as in the classical situation, but keep in mind that these are infinite-dimensional orbifolds modelled on locally convex vector spaces). The paper ends with a numerical computation of the solution of the boundary value problem in a certain setting -- that is, minimizing geodesics joining given endpoints in the shape space.