The geometry of whips

DOI10.1007/S10455-011-9283-ZMaRDI QIDQ664369zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Stephen C. Preston

Publication date 1 March 2012

Published in Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.1754

zbMATH Keywords

inextensible chainnonlinear wave equationRiemannian exponential map

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Second-order nonlinear hyperbolic equations (35L70) Riemannian, Finsler and other geometric structures on infinite-dimensional manifolds (58B20) Equations in function spaces; evolution equations (58D25)

Abstract: In this paper we study geometric aspects of the space of arcs parametrized by unit speed in the $L^2$ metric. Physically this corresponds to the motion of a whip, and it also arises in studying shape recognition. The geodesic equation is the nonlinear, nonlocal wave equation $et{a}_{tt}=partia{l}_s(sigmaet{a}_s)$, with $lvertet{a}_{s}vertequiv1$ and $sigma$ given by $sigm{a}_{ss}-lvertet{a}_{ss}ver{t}^{2}sigma=-lvertet{a}_{st}ver{t}^2$, with boundary conditions $sigma(t,1)=sigma(t,-1)=0$ and $eta(t,0)=0$. We prove that the space of arcs is a submanifold of the space of all curves, that the orthogonal projection exists but is not smooth, and as a consequence we get a Riemannian exponential map that it continuous and even differentiable but not $C^1$. This is related to the fact that the curvature is positive but unbounded above, so that there are conjugate points at arbitrarily short times along any geodesic. We also compare this metric to an $L^2$ metric introduced by Michor and Mumford for shape recognition on the homogeneous space $extImm(I,mathbb{R}^2)/mathcalD(I)$ of immersed curves modulo reparametrizations; we show it has some similar properties (such as nonnegative but unbounded curvature and a nonsmooth exponential map), but that the $L^2$ metric on the arc space yields a genuine Riemannian distance.

Review text

In this interesting paper, the author studies some geometric aspects of the space of arcs parameterized by unit speed in the \(L^2\) metric. The author's summary: ``Physically, this corresponds to the motion of a whip, and it also arises in studying shape recognition. The geodesic equation is the nonlinear, nonlocal wave equation \(\eta _{tt}=\partial _s(\sigma \eta _s)\), with \(|\eta _s|\equiv 1\) and \(\sigma \) given by \(\sigma _{ss}-|\eta _{ss}|^2\sigma =-|\eta _{st}|^2\), with boundary conditions \(\sigma (t,1)=\sigma (t,-1)=0\) and \(\eta (t,0)=0\). We prove that the space of arcs is a submanifold of the space of all curves, that the orthogonal projection exists but is not smooth, and as a consequence we get a Riemannian exponential map that is continuous and even differentiable but not \(C^1\). This is related to the fact that the curvature is positive but unbounded above, so that there are conjugate points at arbitrarily short times along any geodesic. It is appreciated the combination of mathematical methods from apparently different study areas.

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Cited in

(13)

• Whip waves
• An \(H^1\) model for inextensible strings
• Uniformly compressing mean curvature flow
• Quotient elastic metrics on the manifold of arc-length parameterized plane curves
• The geometry of barotropic flow
• Overview of the geometries of shape spaces and diffeomorphism groups
• Riemannian geometry of the space of volume preserving immersions
• Generalized solutions for inextensible string equations
• The motion of whips and chains
• Overdamped dynamics of a falling inextensible network: existence of solutions
• Three methods to put a Riemannian metric on shape space
• A priori estimates for solutions to equations of motion of an inextensible hanging string
• The gradient flow of the potential energy on the space of arcs

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