Transport parallèle et traînée. (Parallel transport and hydrodynamic resistance) (Q916102)

The interpretation of the parallelism of a vector field X(t) along a curve \(\gamma\) (t) in a Riemannian manifold M using the local isometric embedding of M into a Euclidean space is well known. In this paper another, physical interpretation of the parallelism is given which is direct in the sense that it needs no embedding. The author basically shows the following: Fill up M with a liquid, consider small and equal dumb-bells with midpoints on \(\gamma\) (t) and directions X(t). Moving these dumb-bells into each other (considering t as the time), the hydrodynamic resistance is minimal iff X is parallel. The interpretation of the Ricci tensor as the measure of a certain kinetic energy is also discussed.