Sub-Riemannian manifold

Short description: Type of generalization of a Riemannian manifold

In mathematics, a sub-Riemannian manifold is a certain type of generalization of a Riemannian manifold. Roughly speaking, to measure distances in a sub-Riemannian manifold, you are allowed to go only along curves tangent to so-called horizontal subspaces.

Sub-Riemannian manifolds (and so, a fortiori, Riemannian manifolds) carry a natural intrinsic metric called the metric of Carnot–Carathéodory. The Hausdorff dimension of such metric spaces is always an integer and larger than its topological dimension (unless it is actually a Riemannian manifold).

Sub-Riemannian manifolds often occur in the study of constrained systems in classical mechanics, such as the motion of vehicles on a surface, the motion of robot arms, and the orbital dynamics of satellites. Geometric quantities such as the Berry phase may be understood in the language of sub-Riemannian geometry. The Heisenberg group, important to quantum mechanics, carries a natural sub-Riemannian structure.

Definitions

By a distribution on $M$ we mean a subbundle of the tangent bundle of $M$ (see also distribution).

Given a distribution $H(M)\subset T(M)$ a vector field in $H(M)$ is called horizontal. A curve $\gamma$ on $M$ is called horizontal if $\dot{\gamma }(t)\in H_{\gamma (t)}(M)$ for any $t$.

A distribution on $H(M)$ is called completely non-integrable or bracket generating if for any $x\in M$ we have that any tangent vector can be presented as a linear combination of Lie brackets of horizontal fields, i.e. vectors of the form $$A(x),[A,B](x),[A,[B,C]](x),[A,[B,[C,D]]](x),\dots \in T_x(M)$$ where all vector fields $A,B,C,D,\dots$ are horizontal. This requirement is also known as Hörmander's condition.

A sub-Riemannian manifold is a triple $(M,H,g)$, where $M$ is a differentiable manifold, $H$ is a completely non-integrable "horizontal" distribution and $g$ is a smooth section of positive-definite quadratic forms on $H$.

Any (connected) sub-Riemannian manifold carries a natural intrinsic metric, called the metric of Carnot–Carathéodory, defined as

$d(x,y)=\inf \underset{0}{\overset{1}{\int }}\sqrt{g(\dot{\gamma }(t),\dot{\gamma }(t))}dt,$

where infimum is taken along all horizontal curves $\gamma :[0,1]\to M$ such that $\gamma (0)=x$, $\gamma (1)=y$. Horizontal curves can be taken either Lipschitz continuous, Absolutely continuous or in the Sobolev space $H^1([0,1],M)$ producing the same metric in all cases.

The fact that the distance of two points is always finite (i.e. any two points are connected by an horizontal curve) is a consequence of Hörmander's condition known as Chow–Rashevskii theorem.

Examples

A position of a car on the plane is determined by three parameters: two coordinates $x$ and $y$ for the location and an angle $\alpha$ which describes the orientation of the car. Therefore, the position of the car can be described by a point in a manifold

${\mathbb{ℝ}}^2\times S^1.$

One can ask, what is the minimal distance one should drive to get from one position to another? This defines a Carnot–Carathéodory metric on the manifold

${\mathbb{ℝ}}^2\times S^1.$

A closely related example of a sub-Riemannian metric can be constructed on a Heisenberg group: Take two elements $\alpha$ and $\beta$ in the corresponding Lie algebra such that

$\{\alpha ,\beta ,[\alpha ,\beta ]\}$

spans the entire algebra. The horizontal distribution $H$ spanned by left shifts of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ is completely non-integrable. Then choosing any smooth positive quadratic form on $H$ gives a sub-Riemannian metric on the group.

Properties

For every sub-Riemannian manifold, there exists a Hamiltonian, called the sub-Riemannian Hamiltonian, constructed out of the metric for the manifold. Conversely, every such quadratic Hamiltonian induces a sub-Riemannian manifold.

Solutions of the corresponding Hamilton–Jacobi equations for the sub-Riemannian Hamiltonian are called geodesics, and generalize Riemannian geodesics.

See also

• Carnot group, a class of Lie groups that form sub-Riemannian manifolds.
• Distribution
• Hörmander's condition
• Optimal control

References

• Bellaïche, André; Risler, Jean-Jacques, eds. (1996), Sub-Riemannian geometry, Progress in Mathematics, 144, Birkhäuser Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7643-5476-3, https://books.google.com/books?id=7Z7IMze7pDwC 
• Gromov, Mikhael (1996), "Carnot-Carathéodory spaces seen from within", in Bellaïche, André; Risler., Jean-Jacques, Sub-Riemannian geometry, Progr. Math., 144, Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser, pp. 79–323, ISBN 3-7643-5476-3, https://www.ihes.fr/~gromov/PDF/carnot_caratheodory.pdf 
• Le Donne, Enrico, Lecture notes on sub-Riemannian geometry, https://cvgmt.sns.it/media/doc/paper/5339/sub-Riem_notes.pdf 
• Montgomery, Richard (2002), A Tour of Subriemannian Geometries, Their Geodesics and Applications, Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, 91, American Mathematical Society, ISBN 0-8218-1391-9