Related papers: Bicycle paths, elasticae and sub-Riemannian geomet…
In the present paper we show that the geodesic flows of a sub-Riemannian metric and that of a Riemannian extension commute if and only if the extended metric is parallel with respect to a certain connection. This helps us to describe the…
Geodesics on Riemannian manifolds are precisely the locally length-minimizing curves, but their explicit description via simple functions is rarely possible. Geodesics of the simplest form, such as lines on Euclidean space and great circles…
What is the shortest path between two data points lying in a high-dimensional space? While the answer is trivial in Euclidean geometry, it becomes significantly more complex when the data lies on a curved manifold -- requiring a Riemannian…
We consider a family of Riemannian manifolds M such that for each unit speed geodesic gamma of M there exists a distinguished bijective correspondence L between infinitesimal translations along gamma and infinitesimal rotations around it.…
We study a simple model of bicycle motion: a segment of fixed length in multi-dimensional Euclidean space, moving so that the velocity of the rear end is always aligned with the segment. If the front track is prescribed, the trajectory of…
We are concerned with underlying connections between fluids, elasticity, isometric embedding of Riemannian manifolds, and the existence of wrinkled solutions of the associated nonlinear partial differential equations. In this paper, we…
Nonholonomic mechanics describes the motion of systems constrained by nonintegrable constraints. One of its most remarkable properties is that the derivation of the nonholonomic equations is not variational in nature. {However, in} this…
We generalize the notion of planar bicycle tracks -- a.k.a. one-trailer systems -- to so-called tractor/tractrix systems in general Riemannian manifolds and prove explicit expressions for the length of the ensuing tractrices and for the…
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…
We find geodesics, shortest arcs, cut loci, first conjugate loci, distances between arbitrary elements for some left-invariant sub-Riemannian metrics on the Lie groups $SU(2)\times\mathbb{R}$ and $SO(3)\times\mathbb{R}$.
We study the geometry of a weak Riemannian metric on the infinite dimensional manifold of compact spacelike Cauchy hypersurfaces in a globally hyperbolic spacetime. We show that the geodesic distance (i.e. the infimum of lengths of paths…
In this note we give a construction of a smooth Riemannian metric on R^n which is standard Euclidean outside a compact set K and such that it has N = n(n + 1)=2 invisible directions, meaning that all geodesics lines passing through the set…
A generalisation of Riemannian geometry is considered, based exclusively on the minimal assumptions that the line element $ds$ is a regular function of position and direction and that the distance of every point from itself is equal to…
The paper is devoted to the study of geodesic orbit Riemannian spaces that could be characterize by the property that any geodesic is an orbit of a 1-parameter group of isometries. In particular, we discuss some important totally geodesic…
Left invariant metrics induced by the p-norms of the trace in the matrix algebra are studied on the general lineal group. By means of the Euler-Lagrange equations, existence and uniqueness of extremal paths for the length functional are…
We explicitly describe the length minimizing geodesics for a sub-Riemannian structure of the elliptic type defined on $SL(2, \mathbb{R})$. Our method uses a symmetry reduction which translates the problem into a Riemannian problem on a two…
We consider Heisenberg groups equipped with a sub-Finsler metric. Using methods of optimal control theory we prove that in this geometric setting the infinite geodesics are horizontal lines under the assumption that the sub-Finsler metric…
In this article we prove some previously announced results about metric ultraproducts of finite simple groups. We show that any non-discrete metric ultraproduct of alternating or special linear groups is a geodesic metric space. For more…
We provide an easy approach to the geodesic distance on the general linear group GL(n) for left-invariant Riemannian metrics which are also right-O(n)-invariant. The parametrization of geodesic curves and the global existence of length…
The (parallel) linear transports along paths in vector bundles are axiomatically described. Their general form and certain properties are found. It is shown that these transports are locally (i.e. along every fixed path) always Euclidean…