Smooth perturbations of the functional calculus and applications to Riemannian geometry on spaces of metrics

DOI10.1007/S00220-021-04264-YMaRDI QIDQ2071785zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Martin Bauer, Martins Bruveris, Philipp Harms, Peter W. Michor

Publication date 31 January 2022

Published in Communications in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.03169

Bochner Laplacian fractional Laplacian fractional order Sobolev metrics geodesic equation holomorphic perturbations perturbative operator theory pseudo-differential operator Sobolev metrics space of Riemannian metrics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Existence problems for PDEs: global existence, local existence, non-existence (35A01) Partial differential equations of mathematical physics and other areas of application (35Q99) Functional calculus for linear operators (47A60) Manifolds of metrics (especially Riemannian) (58D17) Variational principles in infinite-dimensional spaces (58E30)

Abstract: We show for a certain class of operators

A

and holomorphic functions

f

that the functional calculus

A m a p s t o f (A)

is holomorphic. Using this result we are able to prove that fractional Laplacians

(1 + D e l t a^{g})^{p}

depend real analytically on the metric

g

in suitable Sobolev topologies. As an application we obtain local well-posedness of the geodesic equation for fractional Sobolev metrics on the space of all Riemannian metrics.

Review text

Let \(M\) be a closed manifold of dimension \(m\). The bundle of symmetric covariant two-tensors is denoted by \(S^2T^*M\) and the subbundle of positive definite tensors by \(S^2_+T^*M\). Then the space of smooth Riemannian metrics \(Met(M)\) is the space \(\Gamma(S^2_+T^*M)\) of smooth sections. The study of Riemannian metrics on the space \(Met(M)\) of all Riemannian metrics has a rich history. The canonical weak \(L^2\)-metric on the space \(Met(M)\) is defined by the formula: \[ \begin{aligned} G_g(h,k) = \int_M g(h,k)\, vol(g)= \int_M \operatorname{Tr}(g^{-1}h\cdot g^{-1}k)\, vol(g), \quad g &\in Met(M), \\ h,k &\in T_g Met(M) = S^2T^*M, \end{aligned} \] and has been studied by De Witt (1967), Ebin (1970) and many other authors. Clarke in 2010--2013 showed that the geodesic distance for the \(L^2\)-metric is a positive topological metric on \(Met(M)\) and determined that the metric completion of \(Met(M)\) contains degenerate and highly irregular metrics. This motivated the study of stronger Riemannian metrics on \(Met(M)\) of the form \[ G^P_g(h,k)=\int_M g(P_gh,k) vol(g)=\int_M \operatorname{Tr}(g^{-1}P_g(h)\cdot g^{-1}k)\, vol(g), \] where \(P_g:\Gamma(S^2T^*M) \to \Gamma(S^2T^*M)\) is a positive, symmetric, bijective pseudo-differential operator of order \(2p, p\geq 0,\) depending smoothly on the metric \(g\). This article establishes local well-posedness of the geodesic equation for a wide class of metrics on the space \(Met(M)\) of all Riemannian metrics. A simplified version, for the special case of fractional order Sobolev metrics, of main result reads as follows. On any closed manifold \(M\) and for any real number \(p\geq1\), the geodesic equation of the weak Riemannian metric \[ G_g(h,k)=\int_M \operatorname{Tr}(g^{-1} h g^{-1}(1+\Delta^g)^p k)\, vol(g), \] is locally well-posed in the sense of Hadamard. Here the Bochner Laplacian \(\Delta^g\) acts on symmetric covariant two-tensor fields and is associated to the Levi-Civita connection of the Riemannian metric \(g\). In this paper, the authors prove that the fractional Laplacians \((1+\Delta^g)^p\) depend real analytically on the metric \(g\) in the appropriate Sobolev topologies. In addition the results of this paper provide an integral step towards constructing a Riemannian metric on \(Met(M)\) such that the completion does not contain any degenerate metrics. This article is quite large and consists of six sections. The Introduction provides a good overview of the problems and results in this area. Section 2 sets up some notation and lists some external results, which are used extensively throughout the article. Section 3 establishes the real analytic dependence of the Bochner Laplacian on the Riemannian metric. Section 4 contains general result on holomorphic perturbations of the functional calculus. Section 5 applies this general result to Laplacians on closed Riemannian manifolds. Section 6 shows the local well-posedness of the geodesic equation for fractional order Sobolev metrics on the manifold of all Riemannian metrics. This paper contributes to several different fields: Riemannian geometry on spaces of metrics, well-posedness of geometric partial differential equations, and perturbative operator theory.

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