Multidimensional generalizations of Jacobi's envelope theorem (Q455608)

Jacobi's envelope theorem is a classic result in the calculus of variations; see [\textit{M. Giaquinta} and \textit{S. Hildebrandt}, Calculus of variations 1. The Lagrangian formalism. Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1996; Zbl 0853.49001)]. It applies to a field of extremals in the plane when all of the extremals are tangent to some curve (the envelope). It relates the action along two of the critical paths of that field with the action along the envelope curve. The authors generalize the envelope theorem to arbitrary dimensions, but within the context of the calculus of variations for geodesics of a Riemannian manifold. Picture a hypersurface \(N\) in a Riemannian manifold \(M\). Draw a field of extremals on \(N\), i.e., a totally geodesic foliation of an open subset of \(N\) locally consisting precisely of the \(N\)-geodesics normal to some hypersurface \(S \subset N\). For simplicity, the authors ask for a global choice of such a hypersurface \(S\). Imagine that we allow these geodesics to proceed away from this hypersurface \(S\) for some time \(t=\theta\), and then, at time \(t=\theta\), each of these \(N\)-geodesics leaves \(N\), becoming an \(M\)-geodesic in the ambient space \(M\). At the moment where each geodesic lifts off of \(N\) and enters \(M\), we imagine that it retains the same tangent vector, so it is continuously differentiable. The set of tangent vectors to these piecewise geodesic curves (at least locally) form a manifold denoted \(Y_{\theta}\). By varying \(\theta\), the authors map \(Y_{\theta_1} \to Y_{\theta_2}\), identifying points obtained from starting at the same initial point of \(S\) and proceeding for the same time \(t\), but with different break-away times \(\theta\). They demonstrate that this identification preserves the Poincaré-Cartan 1-form \(p \, dq\), transplanted to \(TM\) from \(T^* M\) by the metric, and then restricted to each \(Y_{\theta}\). This is their analogue of Jacobi's theorem. Their theorem easily suffices to prove Jacobi's theorem in the plane.