Related papers: Variational aspects of the geodesic problem in sub…

We define new Riemannian structures on 7-manifolds by a differential form of mixed degree which is the critical point of a (possibly constrained) variational problem over a fixed cohomology class. The unconstrained critical points…

We study higher critical points of the variational functional associated with a free boundary problem related to plasma confinement. Existence and regularity of minimizers in elliptic free boundary problems have already been studied…

Given a smooth manifold $M$ and a totally nonholonomic distribution $\Delta\subset TM$ of rank $d$, we study the effect of singular curves on the topology of the space of horizontal paths joining two points on $M$. Singular curves are…

We compare different notions of curvature on contact sub-Riemannian manifolds. In particular we introduce canonical curvatures as the coefficients of the sub-Riemannian Jacobi equation. The main result is that all these coefficients are…

We propose a novel Riemannian geometric framework for variational inference in Bayesian models based on the nonparametric Fisher-Rao metric on the manifold of probability density functions. Under the square-root density representation, the…

We investigate the properties of minimizers of one-dimensional variational problems when the Lagrangian has no higher smoothness than continuity. An elementary approximation result is proved, but it is shown that this cannot be in general…

We give a new characterisation of the unparametrised geodesics, or distinguished curves, for affine, pseudo-Riemannian, conformal, and projective geometry. This is a type of moving incidence relation. The characterisation is used to provide…

When the Seiberg-Witten curve of a four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric gauge theory wraps a Riemann surface as a multi-sheeted cover, a topological constraint requires that in general the curve should develop ramification…

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…

The Grushin plane serves as one of the simplest examples of a sub-Riemannian manifold whose distribution is of non-constant rank. Despite the fact that the singular set where this distribution drops rank is itself a smoothly embedded…

We consider the following problem: on any given complete Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$, among all curves which have fixed length as well as fixed end-points and tangents at the end-points, minimise the $L^\infty$ norm of the curvature. We…

In this paper we compute the first and second variation of the normalized Einstein-Hilbert functional on CR manifolds. We characterize critical points as pseudo-Einstein structures. We then turn to the second variation on standard spheres.…

We numerically investigate the distribution of extrema of 'chaotic' Laplacian eigenfunctions on two-dimensional manifolds. Our contribution is two-fold: (a) we count extrema on grid graphs with a small number of randomly added edges and…

We present a local classification of conformally equivalent but oppositely oriented 4-dimensional Kaehler metrics which are toric with respect to a common 2-torus action. In the generic case, these "ambitoric" structures have an intriguing…

We analyze, mainly using bifurcation methods, an elliptic superlinear problem in one-dimension with periodic boundary conditions. One of the main novelties is that we follow for the first time a bifurcation approach, relying on a…

Let $M$ be a weighted manifold with boundary $\partial M$, i.e., a Riemannian manifold where a density function is used to weight the Riemannian Hausdorff measures. In this paper we compute the first and the second variational formulas of…

Let $M$ be an $n$-dimensional Lagrangian submanifold of a complex space form. We prove a pointwise inequality $$\delta(n_1,\ldots,n_k) \leq a(n,k,n_1,\ldots,n_k) \|H\|^2 + b(n,k,n_1,\ldots,n_k)c,$$ with on the left hand side any…

Reparametrization invariant Sobolev metrics on spaces of regular curves have been shown to be of importance in the field of mathematical shape analysis. For practical applications, one usually discretizes the space of smooth curves and…

We prove the shifting theorems of the critical groups of critical points and critical orbits for the energy functionals of Finsler metrics on Hilbert manifolds of $H^1$-curves, and two splitting lemmas for the functionals on Banach…

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…