Invariants of Velocities, and Higher Order Grassmann Bundles

TL;DR

This paper characterizes all continuous invariants under the action of the jet group on higher order velocities and explores the structure of associated Grassmann bundles, revealing limitations on extending invariants.

Contribution

It provides explicit descriptions of all continuous invariants of higher order velocities under jet group actions and analyzes the structure of higher order Grassmann bundles.

Findings

All continuous, $L^{r}_{n}$-invariant functions are characterized.

Local bases of invariants are explicitly constructed.

Nontrivial invariants cannot be extended continuously to the full velocity space.

Abstract

An $(r,n)$-velocity is an $r$-jet with source at $0 \in \R^n$, and target in a manifold $Y$. An $(r,n)$-velocity is said to be regular, if it has a representative which is an immersion at $0 \in \R^{n}$. The manifold $T^{r}_{n}Y$ of $(r,n)$-velocities as well as its open, $L^{r}_{n}$-invariant, dense submanifold $\Imm T^{r}_{n}Y$ of regular $(r,n)$-velocities, are endowed with a natural action of the differential group $L^{r}_{n}$ of invertible $r$-jets with source and target $0 \in \R^{n}$. In this paper, we describe all continuous, $L^{r}_{n}$-invariant, real-valued functions on $T^{r}_{n}Y$ and $\Imm T^{r}_{n}Y$. We find local bases of $L^{r}_{n}$-invariants on $\Imm T^{r}_{n}Y$ in an explicit, recurrent form. To this purpose, higher order Grassmann bundles are considered as the corresponding quotients $P^{r}_{n}Y = \Imm T^{r}_{n}Y/L^{r}_{n}$, and their basic properties are studied. We show that nontrivial $L^{r}_{n}$-invariants on $\Imm T^{r}_{n}Y$ cannot be continuously extended onto $T^{r}_{n}Y$.