The Riemannian obstacle problem (Q579639)

The authors study geodesics on Riemannian manifolds with boundary with minimal conditions imposed on regularity. For them a geodesic r is a trajectory for a point moving with unit speed and having zero acceleration in the interior and strictly outward normal acceleration on the boundary (John Bernoulli's original definition). The boundary is supposed to be \(C^ 2\). In local geodesic coordinates at the boundary, the differential equation of the geodesic of an n-dimensional manifold becomes \[ x_ k''=-\Sigma x_ i'x_ j'\Gamma_{ijk},\quad k<n,\quad x_ n''=-\kappa -\Sigma x_ i'x_ j'\Gamma_{ijk}. \] It follows that the normal projection of r into the boundary has locally Lipschitz second derivatives. The points of r that are not regular are either switch points where r moves on or off the boundary, or accumulation points of switch points. At the latter, the acceleration is zero. The main tools for further investigation are first a generalization of Bonnet's theorem characterizing cut points and a generalization of Jacobi's equation to a strong inequality f''\(\geq (k^ 2+| U'|^ 2)f\) where \(\pi\) /k is a lower bound for the cut radius and U the unit outer normal along the geodesic. These tools suffice for a study of local bipoint uniqueness and the proof that the pointwise limit of geodesics (in a compact subset) is a geodesic, that every boundary point has a neighborhood such that for any two geodesics in the neighborhood with same initial vector and length, one of them is the lift of the other, and a host of interesting results on the way. In all, a fundamental paper.