Related papers: Metric methods for heteroclinic connections
We consider the minimal action problem min \int\_R 1/2 |$\gamma$'|^2 + W($\gamma$) dt among curves lying in a non-locally-compact metric space and connecting two given zeros of W $\ge$ 0. For this problem, the optimal curves are usually…
We revisit the existence problem of heteroclinic connections in $\mathbb{R}^N$ associated with Hamiltonian systems involving potentials $W:\mathbb{R}^N\to \mathbb{R}$ having several global minima. Under very mild assumptions on $W$ we…
By variational methods, we provide a simple proof of existence of a heteroclinic orbit to the Hamiltonian system $u''=\nabla W(u)$ that connects the two global minima of a double-well potential $W$. Moreover, we consider several…
We consider an energy functional combining the square of the local oscillation of a one--dimensional function with a double well potential. We establish the existence of minimal heteroclinic solutions connecting the two wells of the…
We employ the curve shortening flow to establish three new results on the dynamics of geodesic flows of closed Riemannian surfaces. The first one is the stability, under $C^0$-small perturbations of the Riemannian metric, of certain flat…
In this paper, we show that for a minimal pose-graph problem, even in the ideal case of perfect measurements and spherical covariance, using the so-called "wrap function" when comparing angles results in multiple suboptimal local minima. We…
A methodology is developed for data analysis based on empirically constructed geodesic metric spaces. For a probability distribution, the length along a path between two points can be defined as the amount of probability mass accumulated…
The Wiener index of a graph is the sum of all pairwise shortest-path distances between its vertices. In this paper we study the novel problem of finding a minimum Wiener connector: given a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set $Q\subseteq V$…
We introduce the heat method for computing the shortest geodesic distance to a specified subset (e.g., point or curve) of a given domain. The heat method is robust, efficient, and simple to implement since it is based on solving a pair of…
This paper introduces a new mathematical formulation and numerical approach for the computation of distances and geodesics between immersed planar curves. Our approach combines the general simplifying transform for first-order elastic…
Algorithms for minimal enclosing ball problems are often geometric in nature. To highlight the metric ingredients underlying their efficiency, we focus here on a particularly simple geodesic-based method. A recent subgradient-based study…
Projective connections arise from equivalence classes of affine connections under the reparametrization of geodesics. They may also be viewed as quotient systems of the classical geodesic equation. After studying the link between integrals…
We consider the following questions: given a hyperbolic plane domain and a separation of its complement into two disjoint closed sets each of which contains at least two points, what is the shortest closed hyperbolic geodesic which…
In this paper we study 1/k geodesics, those closed geodesics that minimize on all subintervals of length $L/k$, where $L$ is the length of the geodesic. We develop new techniques to study the minimizing properties of these curves on doubled…
We consider approximating a measure by a parameterized curve subject to length penalization. That is for a given finite positive compactly supported measure $\mu$, for $p \geq 1$ and $\lambda>0$ we consider the functional \[ E(\gamma) =…
We investigate a graph theoretic analog of geodesic geometry. In a graph $G=(V,E)$ we consider a system of paths $\mathcal{P}=\{P_{u,v}|u,v\in V\}$ where $P_{u,v}$ connects vertices $u$ and $v$. This system is consistent in that if vertices…
We consider the problem of finding embedded closed geodesics on the two-sphere with an incomplete metric defined outside a point. Various techniques including curve shortening methods are used.
We present a generic solution to the fundamental problem of how to connect two points in a plane by a smooth curve that goes through these points with a given slope. The smoothness of any curve depends both on its curvature and its length.…
Fix two points $x,\bar{x}\in S^2$ and two directions (without orientation) $\eta,\bar\eta$ of the velocities in these points. In this paper we are interested to the problem of minimizing the cost $$ J[\gamma]=\int_0^T…
We give an accessible introduction and elaboration on the methods used in obtaining a geodesic, which is the curve of shortest length connecting two points lying on the surface of a function. This is found through computing what's known as…