English

Not all sub-Riemannian minimizing geodesics are smooth

Differential Geometry 2025-02-03 v1 Metric Geometry

Abstract

A longstanding open question in sub-Riemannian geometry is the following: are sub-Riemannian length minimizers smooth? We give a negative answer to this question, exhibiting an example of a C2C^2 but not C3C^3 length-minimizer of a real-analytic (even polynomial) sub-Riemannian structure.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.18920,
  title  = {Not all sub-Riemannian minimizing geodesics are smooth},
  author = {Yacine Chitour and Frédéric Jean and Roberto Monti and Ludovic Rifford and Ludovic Sacchelli and Mario Sigalotti and Alessandro Socionovo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.18920},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:27:03.689Z