English

Higher Elastica: Geodesics in the Jet Space

Dynamical Systems 2022-10-18 v1

Abstract

Carnot groups are subRiemannian manifolds. As such they admit geodesic flows, which are left-invariant Hamiltonian flows on their cotangent bundles. Some of these flows are integrable. Some are not. The space of k-jets for real-valued functions on the real line forms a Carnot group of dimension k+2k+2. We show that its geodesic flow is integrable and that its geodesics generalize Euler's elastica, with the case k=2k=2 corresponding to the elastica, as shown by Sachkov and Ardentov.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.08022,
  title  = {Higher Elastica: Geodesics in the Jet Space},
  author = {Alejandro Bravo-Doddoli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.08022},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:18:10.895Z