Related papers: On geodesic envelopes and caustics

We investigate geodesics in specific Kundt type N (or conformally flat) solutions to Einstein's equations. Components of the curvature tensor in parallelly transported tetrads are then explicitly evaluated and analyzed. This elucidates some…

We study the geodesic flow of a compact surface without conjugate points and genus greater than one and continuous Green bundles. Identifying each strip of bi-asymptotic geodesics induces an equivalence relation on the unit tangent bundle.…

We study area- and length-preserving curvature flows for embedded closed curves on pinched Hadamard surfaces. In the variable-curvature setting, the evolution equations contain additional lower-order terms, so the PDE analysis requires…

The conjugate locus of a point on a surface is the envelope of geodesics emanating radially from that point. In this paper we show that the conjugate loci of generic points on convex surfaces satisfy a simple relationship between the…

We examine some common features of minimal surfaces, nonzero constant mean curvature surfaces and marginally outer trapped surfaces, concerning their stability and rigidity, and consider some applications to Riemannian geometry and general…

We study "flat knot types" of geodesics on compact surfaces M^2. For every flat knot type and any Riemannian metric g we introduce a Conley index associated with the curve shortening flow on the space of immersed curves on M^2. We conclude…

The behavior of geodesic curves on even seemingly simple surfaces can be surprisingly complex. In this paper we use the Hamiltonian formulation of the geodesic equations to analyze their integrability properties. In particular, we examine…

For the Thurston (asymmetric) metric on Teichm\"uller space, the defect from being uniquely geodesic is described by the envelope, defined as the union of geodesics from the initial point to the terminal point. Using the harmonic stretch…

Let M be a smooth strictly convex closed surface in space and denote by H the set of points x in the exterior of M such that all the tangent segments from x to M have equal lengths. In this note we prove that if H is either a closed surface…

We prove a structure theorem for ergodic homological rotation sets of homeomorphisms isotopic to the identity on a closed orientable hyperbolic surface: this set is made of a finite number of pieces that are either one-dimensional or almost…

The Gauss map of a generic immersion of a smooth, oriented surface into $\mathbb R^4$ is an immersion. But this map takes values on the Grassmanian of oriented 2-planes in $\mathbb R^4$. Since this manifold has a structure of a product of…

We prove the existence of Alexandrov embedded closed magnetic geodesics on closed hyperbolic surfaces. Closed magnetic geodesics correspond to closed curves with prescribed geodesic curvature.

We state that any constant curvature Riemannian metric with conical singularities of constant sign curvature on a compact (orientable) surface $S$ can be realized as a convex polyhedron in a Riemannian or Lorentzian) space-form. Moreover…

In many singular metric spaces, the regularity of a shortest-length curve is unknown. Algebraic varieties, or more generally sets defined by finitely many polynomial or real analytic equalities or inequalities, all locally partition into…

This paper is about a type of quantitative density of closed geodesics and orthogeodesics on complete finite-area hyperbolic surfaces. The main results are upper bounds on the length of the shortest closed geodesic and the shortest doubly…

The Riemannian manifold of curves with a Sobolev metric is an important and frequently studied model in the theory of shape spaces. Various numerical approaches have been proposed to compute geodesics, but so far elude a rigorous…

We study wave maps from the circle to a general compact Riemannian manifold. We prove that the global controllability of this geometric equation is characterized precisely by the homotopy class of the data. As a remarkable intermediate…

The tangential map is a map on the set of smooth planar curves. It satisfies the 3D-consistency property and is closely related to some well-known integrable equations.

Since their introduction by Thurston, geodesic laminations on hyperbolic surfaces occur in many contexts. In this paper, we propose a generalization of geodesic laminations on locally CAT(0), complete, geodesic metric spaces, whose boundary…

We show that round hemispheres are the only compact 2 dimensional Riemannian manifolds (with or without boundary) such that almost every pair of complete geodesics intersect once and only once. We prove this by establishing a sharp…