synthetic differential geometry
Introductions
from point-set topology to differentiable manifolds
geometry of physics: coordinate systems, smooth spaces, manifolds, smooth homotopy types, supergeometry
Differentials
Tangency
The magic algebraic facts
Theorems
Axiomatics
Models
differential equations, variational calculus
Chern-Weil theory, ∞-Chern-Weil theory
Cartan geometry (super, higher)
On a Riemannian manifold , a geodesic (or geodesic line, geodesic path) is a path , for some (possibly infinite) interval , which locally minimizes distance.
One way to define a geodesic is as a critical point of the functional of length
on the appropriate space of curves , where is the metric tensor. This implies that it satisfies the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations, which in this case means that the covariant derivative (for the Levi-Civita connection)
vanishes.
In local coordinates, with Christoffel symbols the Euler-Lagrange equations for geodesics form a system
So this means that a curve is a geodesic if at every point its tangent vector is the parallel transport of the tangent vector at the start point along the curve.
A geodesic may not globally minimize the distance between its end points. For instance, on a 2-dimensional sphere, geodesics are arcs of great circle?s. Any two distinct non-antipodal points are connected by exactly two such geodesics, one shorter than the other (you can go from Los Angeles to Boston directly across North America, or the long way around the world).
A geodesic which does globally minimize distance between its end points is called a minimizing geodesic. The length of a minimizing geodesic between two points defines a distance function for any Riemannian manifold which makes it into a metric space.
Last revised on February 7, 2019 at 10:59:33. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.