Homogeneous Sobolev metric of order one on diffeomorphism groups on real line (Q484456)

The authors extend the results of the article [\textit{J. Lenells}, J. Geom. Phys. 57, No. 10, 2049--2064 (2007; Zbl 1125.35085)] to groups of real-analytic and ultra-differentiable diffeomorphisms and show that the solutions of the Hunter-Saxton (HS) equation are analytic in time and space. Considering the Sobolev \(H^{1}\)-metric and the HS equation on the real line they have established the main result: Theorem. The non-periodic HS equation is the geodesic equation on \(\text{Diff}_{\mathcal A_{1}}(\mathbb R)\) with respect to the right-invariant \(\dot{H}^{1}\)-metric. Furthermore, the space \((\text{Diff}_{\mathcal A_{1}}(\mathbb R), \dot{H}^{1})\) is isometric to an open subset in \((\mathcal A(\mathbb R), L^{2})\) and thus a flat space in the sense of Riemannian geometry. Here \(\mathcal A(\mathbb R)\) denotes one of the functional space \(C_{C}^{\infty}(\mathbb R)\), \(S(\mathbb R)\) or \(W^{\infty,1}(\mathbb R)\) and \(\text{Diff}_{\mathcal A_1}(\mathbb R)\) is the extension over the diffeomorphism group including shifts near \(+\infty\). It is noted, that the normal subgroups \(\text{Diff}_{\mathcal A}(\mathbb R)\) do not admit the geodesic equation (or the Levi-Civita covariant derivative for this right-invariant metric). Also it is noted that one can obtain a similar result for the two-component HS equation. It is discussed the case of the non-homogeneous Sobolev \(H^{1}\)-metric, which is related to the Camassa-Holm equation.