Almost local metrics on shape space of hypersurfaces in n-space

TL;DR

This paper generalizes almost local Riemannian metrics from plane curves to hypersurfaces in n-dimensional space, deriving geodesic equations, curvature, and conducting numerical experiments on shape space.

Contribution

It extends the theory of almost local metrics to hypersurfaces, providing explicit formulas for geodesics and curvature, and includes numerical analysis.

Findings

Derived geodesic equations for hypersurfaces

Computed sectional curvature for special metrics

Numerical experiments demonstrate metric behavior

Abstract

This paper extends parts of the results from [P.W.Michor and D. Mumford, \emph{Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal.,} 23 (2007), pp. 74--113] for plane curves to the case of hypersurfaces in $\mathbb R^n$. Let $M$ be a compact connected oriented $n-1$ dimensional manifold without boundary like the sphere or the torus. Then shape space is either the manifold of submanifolds of $\mathbb R^n$ of type $M$, or the orbifold of immersions from $M$ to $\mathbb R^n$ modulo the group of diffeomorphisms of $M$. We investigate almost local Riemannian metrics on shape space. These are induced by metrics of the following form on the space of immersions: $$ G_f(h,k) = \int_{M} \Phi(\on{Vol}(f),\operatorname{Tr}(L))\g(h, k) \operatorname{vol}(f^*\g),$$ where $\g$ is the Euclidean metric on $\mathbb R^n$, $f^*\g$ is the induced metric on $M$, $h,k\in C^\infty(M,\mathbb R^n)$ are tangent vectors at $f$ to the space of embeddings or immersions, where $\Phi:\mathbb R^2\to \mathbb R_{>0}$ is a suitable smooth function, $\operatorname{Vol}(f) = \int_M\operatorname{vol}(f^*\g)$ is the total hypersurface volume of $f(M)$, and the trace $\operatorname{Tr}(L)$ of the Weingarten mapping is the mean curvature. For these metrics we compute the geodesic equations both on the space of immersions and on shape space, the conserved momenta arising from the obvious symmetries, and the sectional curvature. For special choices of $\Phi$ we give complete formulas for the sectional curvature. Numerical experiments illustrate the behavior of these metrics.