Nonholonomic tangent spaces: intrinsic construction and rigid dimensions

A nonholonomic space is a smooth manifold equipped with a bracket generating family of vector fields. Its infinitesimal version is a homogeneous space of a nilpotent Lie group endowed with a dilation which measures the anisotropy of the space. We give an intrinsic construction of these infinitesimal objects and classify all rigid (i.e. not deformable) cases

Invariant Lagrange submanifolds of dissipative systems

We study solutions of modified Hamilton-Jacobi equations H(du/dq,q) + cu(q) = 0, q \in M, on a compact manifold M

Jacobi fields in optimal control: one-dimensional variations

We study the structure of Jacobi fields in the case of an analytic system and piece-wise analytic control. Moreover, we consider only 1-dimensional control variations. Jacobi fields are piece-wise analytic in this case but may have much more singularities than the control. We derive ODEs that these fields satisfy on the intervals of regularity and study behavior of the fields in a neighborhood of a singularity where the ODE becomes singular and the Jacobi fields may have jumps

On the Hausdorff volume in sub-Riemannian geometry

For a regular sub-Riemannian manifold we study the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the spherical Hausdorff measure with respect to a smooth volume. We prove that this is the volume of the unit ball in the nilpotent approximation and it is always a continuous function. We then prove that up to dimension 4 it is smooth, while starting from dimension 5, in corank 1 case, it is C^3 (and C^4 on every smooth curve) but in general not C^5. These results answer to a question addressed by Montgomery about the relation between two intrinsic volumes that can be defined in a sub-Riemannian manifold, namely the Popp and the Hausdorff volume. If the nilpotent approximation depends on the point (that may happen starting from dimension 5), then they are not proportional, in general.Comment: Accepted on Calculus and Variations and PD

Continuity of Optimal Control Costs and its application to Weak KAM Theory

We prove continuity of certain cost functions arising from optimal control of affine control systems. We give sharp sufficient conditions for this continuity. As an application, we prove a version of weak KAM theorem and consider the Aubry-Mather problems corresponding to these systems.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figures, added explanations in the proofs of the main theorem and the exampl