Minimal horizontal triods: analysis and computation

Existence theories for free problems in one independent variable (49J05) Heat and other parabolic equation methods for PDEs on manifolds (58J35) Finite element, Rayleigh-Ritz and Galerkin methods for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M60)

Review text

The authors consider the Heisenberg group \(\mathcal{H}=(\mathbb{R}^{3},\circ )\), where \(\circ \) is the group operation given by: \(\left( \begin{array}{c} x \\\Ny \\\Nz \end{array} \right) \circ \left( \begin{array}{c} \widehat{x} \\\N\widehat{y} \\\N\widehat{z} \end{array} \right) =\left( \begin{array}{c} x+\widehat{x} \\\Ny+\widehat{y} \\\Nz+\widehat{z}+\frac{1}{2}(x\widehat{y}-y\widehat{x}) \end{array} \right) \). They recall that \(\mathcal{H}\) is a Lie group with Lie algebra generated by the left invariant vector fields \(X_{1}=\frac{\partial }{ \partial x}-\frac{y}{2}\frac{\partial }{\partial z}\), \(X_{2}=\frac{\partial }{\partial y}+\frac{x}{2}\frac{\partial }{\partial z}\), \(X_{3}=\frac{ \partial }{\partial z}\), and that \(\mathcal{H}\) is a nilpotent Lie group of step 2. A (sufficiently smooth) curve \(\gamma :[0,1]\rightarrow \mathcal{H}\) is horizontal if its tangent vector \(\gamma ^{\prime }(u)\) is a linear combination of \(X_{1}(\gamma (u))\) and \(X_{2}(\gamma (u))\) for each \(u\in \lbrack 0,1]\). A (sufficiently smooth) horizontal curve \(\gamma :[0,1]\rightarrow \mathcal{H}\) is regular if \(\left\vert \gamma _{u}(u)\right\vert _{g}=\sqrt{g_{p}(\gamma _{u}(u),\gamma _{u}(u))}\neq 0\) for all \(u\in \lbrack 0,1]\), where \(g_{p}(\cdot ,\cdot ):\mathbb{R} ^{3}\times \mathbb{R}^{3}\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty )\) is the inner product for which the vectors \(X_{i}(p)\) build an orthonormal basis. Given a horizontal curve \(\gamma :[0,1]\rightarrow \mathcal{H}\), the projected curve of \(\gamma \) in the plane \(\{z=0\}\) is \(c:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\), defined by \(c=(\gamma ^{1},\gamma ^{2})^{t}\). Given a planar curve \( c:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\), any map \(\gamma :[0,1]\rightarrow \mathcal{H}\), \(\gamma =(\gamma ^{1},\gamma ^{2},\gamma ^{3})^{t}\), with \( c=(\gamma ^{1},\gamma ^{2})^{t}\) and \(\gamma ^{3}\) satisfying \(\gamma ^{3}(u)=\gamma ^{3}(0)+\int_{0}^{u}(-\frac{1}{2}\gamma ^{2}(\xi )\gamma _{u}^{1}(\xi )+\frac{1}{2}\gamma ^{1}(\xi )\gamma _{u}^{2}(\xi ))d\xi \) is a horizontal lift of \(c\). The authors recall properties of tangent, normal, curvature vectors, and horizontal curves, among which that any two points in \(\mathcal{H}\) can be connected by a horizontal smooth curve. They write the Euler-Lagrange equations for curves minimizing the length functional, introducing the Euclidean length of a curve \(c\in C^{1}([0,1],\mathbb{R}^{2}) \) as \(L_{E}(c)=\int_{0}^{1}\left\vert c_{u}(u)\right\vert du\). Given three distinct points \(P_{\alpha }=(P_{\alpha }^{1},P_{\alpha }^{2},P_{\alpha }^{3})^{t}\in \mathbb{R}^{3}\), \(\alpha =1,2,3\), they consider three regular horizontal curves \(\gamma _{\alpha }:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\) connecting the points \(P_{\alpha }\) to a common junction point \(\Sigma \), i.e. \(\gamma _{\alpha }(1)=P_{\alpha }\), \(\alpha =1,2,3\), \(\gamma _{1}(0)=\gamma _{2}(0)=\gamma _{3}(0)=\Sigma \in \mathbb{R}^{3}\), with the associated length functional \(L(\Gamma )=\sum_{\alpha =1}^{3}L(\gamma _{\alpha })\), for the horizontal triod \(\Gamma =(\gamma _{1},\gamma _{2},\gamma _{3})\). A horizontal triod \(\Gamma \) is regular if all its curves \(\gamma _{\alpha }\) are regular. A curve \(c\in H^{1,1}((0,1),\mathbb{R }^{2})\), is quasinormal if \(\left\vert c_{u}\right\vert =L_{E}(c)>0\) in \( (0,1)\). A triod \(\Gamma _{c}\in \mathcal{C}=\{(c_{1},c_{2},c_{3}):c_{\alpha }\in H^{1,1}((0,1),\mathbb{R}^{2})\), \(c_{\alpha }(1)=(P_{\alpha }^{1},P_{\alpha }^{2})^{t}\), \(\alpha =1,2,3\), \(c_{1}(0)=c_{2}(0)=c_{3}(0)\}\) is quasinormal if all its components are quasinormal. The authors introduce the space \(\mathcal{C}_{D}=\{(c_{1},c_{2},c_{3})\in \mathcal{C}:c_{\alpha }\in H^{1,2}((0,1),\mathbb{R}^{2})\}\), the functional \(D(\Gamma _{c})=\frac{1 }{2}\sum_{\alpha =1}^{3}\int_{0}^{1}\left\vert (c_{\alpha })u\right\vert ^{2}du\geq 0\), and the \(\epsilon \)-problem: \(\min\{(L_{E}(\Gamma _{c}))^{2}+\epsilon D(\Gamma _{c}):\Gamma _{c}\in \mathcal{C}_{D}\), \( G(c_{1})-P_{1}^{3}=G(c_{2})-P_{2}^{3}=G(c_{3})-P_{1}^{3}\}\), where \( G(c)=\int_{0}^{1}(-\frac{1}{2}c^{2}(u)c_{u}^{1}(u)+\frac{1}{2} c^{1}(u)c_{u}^{2}(u))du\). They prove the existence of a minimizer to this problem, applying standard direct methods of calculus of variations, starting from a minimizing sequence. They write the Euler-Lagrange equations in this context and they prove a regularity result for the triod minimizer. They define a horizontal curve shortening flow for triods and they prove the existence of a solution to this problem such that its flow converges to critical points of \(L\). They propose a numerical scheme to solve this problem, based on a weak formulation and a finite element method. The paper ends with the presentation of the results of this numerical scheme in different cases.

Cites work

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