Geometric Aspects Of Analysis And Mechanics

Hans Duistermaat, an influential geometer-analyst, made substantial contributions to the theory of ordinary and partial differential equations, symplectic, differential, and algebraic geometry, minimal surfaces, semisimple Lie groups, mechanics, mathematical physics, and related fields. Written in his honor, the invited and refereed articles in this volume contain important new results as well as surveys in some of these areas, clearly demonstrating the impact of Duistermaat's research and, in addition, exhibiting interrelationships among many of the topics.

This contributed volume explores the applications of various topics in modern differential geometry to the foundations of continuum mechanics. In particular, the contributors use notions from areas such as global analysis, algebraic topology, and geometric measure theory. Chapter authors are experts in their respective areas, and provide important insights from the most recent research. Organized into two parts, the book first covers kinematics, forces, and stress theory, and then addresses defects, uniformity, and homogeneity. Specific topics covered include: Global stress and hyper-stress theories Applications of de Rham currents to singular dislocations Manifolds of mappings for continuum mechanics Kinematics of defects in solid crystals Geometric Continuum Mechanics will appeal to graduate students and researchers in the fields of mechanics, physics, and engineering who seek a more rigorous mathematical understanding of the area. Mathematicians interested in applications of analysis and geometry will also find the topics covered here of interest.

Geometric Mechanics here means mechanics on a pseudo-riemannian manifold and the main goal is the study of some mechanical models and concepts, with emphasis on the intrinsic and geometric aspects arising in classical problems. The first seven chapters are written in the spirit of Newtonian Mechanics while the last two ones as well as two of the four appendices describe the foundations and some aspects of Special and General Relativity. All the material has a coordinate free presentation but, for the sake of motivation, many examples and exercises are included in order to exhibit the desirable flavor of physical applications.

Providing a logically balanced and authoritative account of the different branches and problems of mathematical physics that Lagrange studied and developed, this volume presents up-to-date developments in differential goemetry, dynamical systems, the calculus of variations, and celestial and analytical mechanics.

Reflecting the significant contributions of Russian mathematicians to the field, this book contains a selection of papers on tensor and vector analysis. It is divided into three parts, covering Hamiltonian systems, Riemannian geometry and calculus of variations, and topology. The range of applications of these topics is very broad, as many modern geometrical problems recur across a wide range of fields, including mechanics and physics as well as mathematics. Many of the approaches to problems presented in this volume will be novel to the Western reader, although questions are of global interest. The main achievements of the Russian school are placed in the context of the development of each individual subject.

Consisting of two parts, the first part of this volume is an essentially self-contained exposition of the geometric aspects of local and global regularity theory for the Monge–Ampère and linearized Monge–Ampère equations. As an application, we solve the second boundary value problem of the prescribed affine mean curvature equation, which can be viewed as a coupling of the latter two equations. Of interest in its own right, the linearized Monge–Ampère equation also has deep connections and applications in analysis, fluid mechanics and geometry, including the semi-geostrophic equations in atmospheric flows, the affine maximal surface equation in affine geometry and the problem of finding Kahler metrics of constant scalar curvature in complex geometry. Among other topics, the second part provides a thorough exposition of the large time behavior and discounted approximation of Hamilton–Jacobi equations, which have received much attention in the last two decades, and a new approach to the subject, the nonlinear adjoint method, is introduced. The appendix offers a short introduction to the theory of viscosity solutions of first-order Hamilton–Jacobi equations.

Collecting together contributed lectures and mini-courses, this book details the research presented in a special semester titled “Geometric mechanics – variational and stochastic methods” run in the first half of 2015 at the Centre Interfacultaire Bernoulli (CIB) of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The aim of the semester was to develop a common language needed to handle the wide variety of problems and phenomena occurring in stochastic geometric mechanics. It gathered mathematicians and scientists from several different areas of mathematics (from analysis, probability, numerical analysis and statistics, to algebra, geometry, topology, representation theory, and dynamical systems theory) and also areas of mathematical physics, control theory, robotics, and the life sciences, with the aim of developing the new research area in a concentrated joint effort, both from the theoretical and applied points of view. The lectures were given by leading specialists in different areas of mathematics and its applications, building bridges among the various communities involved and working jointly on developing the envisaged new interdisciplinary subject of stochastic geometric mechanics.

Nonholonomic systems are a widespread topic in several scientific and commercial domains, including robotics, locomotion and space exploration. This work sheds new light on this interdisciplinary character through the investigation of a variety of aspects coming from several disciplines. The main aim is to illustrate the idea that a better understanding of the geometric structures of mechanical systems unveils new and unknown aspects to them, and helps both analysis and design to solve standing problems and identify new challenges. In this way, separate areas of research such as Classical Mechanics, Differential Geometry, Numerical Analysis or Control Theory are brought together in this study of nonholonomic systems.