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Abstract Dynamical formulations of optimal transport (OT) frame the task of comparing distributions as a variational problem which searches for a path between distributions minimizing a kinetic energy functional. In applications, it is frequently natural to require paths of distributions to satisfy additional conditions. Inspired by this, we introduce a model for dynamical OT which incorporates constraints on the space of admissible paths into the framework of unbalanced OT, where the source and target measures are allowed to have a different total mass. Our main results establish, for several general families of constraints, the existence of solutions to the variational problem which defines this path constrained unbalanced OT framework. These results are primarily concerned with distributions defined on an Euclidean space, but we extend them to distributions defined over parallelizable Riemannian manifolds as well. We also consider metric properties of our framework, showing that, for certain types of constraints, our model defines a metric on the relevant space of distributions. This metric is shown to arise as a geodesic distance of a Riemannian metric, obtained through an analogue of Otto’s submersion in the classical OT setting. 

Abstract We investigate the geometry of the space of immersed closed curves equipped with reparametrization-invariant Riemannian metrics; the metrics we consider are Sobolev metrics of possible fractional-order$$q\in [0,\infty )$$ $q\in [0,\infty )$. We establish the critical Sobolev index on the metric for several key geometric properties. Our first main result shows that the Riemannian metric induces a metric space structure if and only if$$q>1/2$$ $q>1/2$. Our second main result shows that the metric is geodesically complete (i.e., the geodesic equation is globally well posed) if$$q>3/2$$ $q>3/2$, whereas if$$q<3/2$$ $q<3/2$then finite-time blowup may occur. The geodesic completeness for$$q>3/2$$ $q>3/2$is obtained by proving metric completeness of the space of$$H^q$$ $H^q$-immersed curves with the distance induced by the Riemannian metric. 

Abstract In this article we propose a novel geometric model to study the motion of a physical flag. In our approach, a flag is viewed as an isometric immersion from the square with values in$$\mathbb {R}^3$$ $R^3$satisfying certain boundary conditions at the flag pole. Under additional regularity constraints we show that the space of all such flags carries the structure of an infinite dimensional manifold and can be viewed as a submanifold of the space of all immersions. In the second part of the article we equip the space of isometric immersions with its natural kinetic energy and derive the corresponding equations of motion. This approach can be viewed in a spirit similar to Arnold’s geometric picture for the motion of an incompressible fluid. 

Abstract We investigate the geometry of a family of equations in two dimensions which interpolate between the Euler equations of ideal hydrodynamics and the inviscid surface quasi-geostrophic equation. This family can be realised as geodesic equations on groups of diffeomorphisms. We show precisely when the corresponding Riemannian exponential map is non-linear Fredholm of index 0. We further illustrate this by examining the distribution of conjugate points in these settings via a Morse theoretic approach 

Abstract We introduce a family of Finsler metrics, called the$$L^p$$ $L^p$-Fisher–Rao metrics$$F_p$$ $F_p$, for$$p\in (1,\infty )$$ $p\in (1,\infty )$, which generalizes the classical Fisher–Rao metric$$F_2$$ $F_2$, both on the space of densities$${\text {Dens}}_+(M)$$ ${\text{Dens}}_{+}\left(M\right)$and probability densities$${\text {Prob}}(M)$$ $\text{Prob}\left(M\right)$. We then study their relations to the Amari–C̆encov$$\alpha $$ $\alpha$-connections$$\nabla ^{(\alpha )}$$ ${\nabla }^{\left(\alpha \right)}$from information geometry: on$${\text {Dens}}_+(M)$$ ${\text{Dens}}_{+}\left(M\right)$, the geodesic equations of$$F_p$$ $F_p$and$$\nabla ^{(\alpha )}$$ ${\nabla }^{\left(\alpha \right)}$coincide, for$$p = 2/(1-\alpha )$$ $p=2/(1-\alpha )$. Both are pullbacks of canonical constructions on$$L^p(M)$$ $L^p\left(M\right)$, in which geodesics are simply straight lines. In particular, this gives a new variational interpretation of$$\alpha $$ $\alpha$-geodesics as being energy minimizing curves. On$${\text {Prob}}(M)$$ $\text{Prob}\left(M\right)$, the$$F_p$$ $F_p$and$$\nabla ^{(\alpha )}$$ ${\nabla }^{\left(\alpha \right)}$geodesics can still be thought as pullbacks of natural operations on the unit sphere in$$L^p(M)$$ $L^p\left(M\right)$, but in this case they no longer coincide unless$$p=2$$ $p=2$. Using this transformation, we solve the geodesic equation of the$$\alpha $$ $\alpha$-connection by showing that the geodesic are pullbacks of projections of straight lines onto the unit sphere, and they always cease to exists after finite time when they leave the positive part of the sphere. This unveils the geometric structure of solutions to the generalized Proudman–Johnson equations, and generalizes them to higher dimensions. In addition, we calculate the associate tensors of$$F_p$$ $F_p$, and study their relation to$$\nabla ^{(\alpha )}$$ ${\nabla }^{\left(\alpha \right)}$.