Prolongation of quasi-principal frame bundles and geometry of flag structures on manifolds

Motivated by the geometric theory of differential equations and the variational approach to the equivalence problem for geometric structures on manifolds, we consider the problem of equivalence for distributions with fixed submanifolds of flags on each fiber. We call them flag structures. The construction of the canonical frames for these structures can be given in the two prolongation steps: the first step, based on our previous works, gives the canonical bundle of moving frames for the fixed submanifolds of flags on each fiber and the second step consists of the prolongation of the bundle obtained in the first step. The bundle obtained in the first step is not as a rule a principal bundle so that the classical Tanaka prolongation procedure for filtered structures can not be applied to it. However, under natural assumptions on submanifolds of flags and on the ambient distribution, this bundle satisfies a nice weaker property. The main goal of the present paper is to formalize this property, introducing the so-called quasi-principle frame bundles, and to generalize the Tanaka prolongation procedure to these bundles. Applications to the equivalence problems for systems of differential equations of mixed order, bracket generating distributions, sub-Riemannian and more general structures on distributions are given.Comment: 49 pages. The Introduction was extended substantially: we demonstrate how flag structures appear in the geometry of double fibrations and, using this language, we discuss the motivating examples in more detai

Liouville action and Weil-Petersson metric on deformation spaces, global Kleinian reciprocity and holography

We rigorously define the Liouville action functional for finitely generated, purely loxodromic quasi-Fuchsian group using homology and cohomology double complexes naturally associated with the group action. We prove that the classical action - the critical point of the Liouville action functional, considered as a function on the quasi-Fuchsian deformation space, is an antiderivative of a 1-form given by the difference of Fuchsian and quasi-Fuchsian projective connections. This result can be considered as global quasi-Fuchsian reciprocity which implies McMullen's quasi-Fuchsian reciprocity. We prove that the classical action is a Kahler potential of the Weil-Petersson metric. We also prove that Liouville action functional satisfies holography principle, i.e., it is a regularized limit of the hyperbolic volume of a 3-manifold associated with a quasi-Fuchsian group. We generalize these results to a large class of Kleinian groups including finitely generated, purely loxodromic Schottky and quasi-Fuchsian groups and their free combinations.Comment: 60 pages, proof of the Lemma 5.1 corrected, references and section 5.3 adde

Mean curvature flow and quasilocal mass for two-surfaces in Hamiltonian General Relativity

A family of quasilocal mass definitions that includes as special cases the Hawking mass and the Brown-York ``rest mass'' energy is derived for spacelike 2-surfaces in spacetime. The definitions involve an integral of powers of the norm of the spacetime mean curvature vector of the 2-surface, whose properties are connected with apparent horizons. In particular, for any spacelike 2-surface, the direction of mean curvature is orthogonal (dual in the normal space) to a unique normal direction in which the 2-surface has vanishing expansion in spacetime. The quasilocal mass definitions are obtained by an analysis of boundary terms arising in the gravitational ADM Hamiltonian on hypersurfaces with a spacelike 2-surface boundary, using a geometric time-flow chosen proportional to the dualized mean curvature vector field at the boundary surface. A similar analysis is made choosing a geometric rotational flow given in terms of the twist covector of the dual pair of mean curvature vector fields, which leads to a family of quasilocal angular momentum definitions involving the squared norm of the twist. The large sphere limit of these definitions is shown to yield the ADM mass and angular momentum in asymptotically flat spacetimes, while at apparent horizons a quasilocal version of the Gibbons-Penrose inequality is derived. Finally, some results concerning positivity are proved for the quasilocal masses, motivated by consideration of spacelike mean curvature flow of 2-surfaces in spacetime.Comment: Revised version, includes an analysis of null flows with applications to mass and angular momentum for apparent horizon

Causal Fermion Systems -- An Overview

The theory of causal fermion systems is an approach to describe fundamental physics. We here introduce the mathematical framework and give an overview of the objectives and current results.Comment: 54 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure, minor improvements (published version

Nonlinear Analysis and Optimization with Applications

Nonlinear analysis has wide and significant applications in many areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, variational analysis, nonlinear optimization, convex analysis, nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations, dynamical system theory, mathematical economics, game theory, signal processing, control theory, data mining, and so forth. Optimization problems have been intensively investigated, and various feasible methods in analyzing convergence of algorithms have been developed over the last half century. In this Special Issue, we will focus on the connection between nonlinear analysis and optimization as well as their applications to integrate basic science into the real world