Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects

Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects
Author: Jürgen Jost
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3034889186

The present book contains the lecture notes from a "Nachdiplomvorlesung", a topics course adressed to Ph. D. students, at the ETH ZUrich during the winter term 95/96. Consequently, these notes are arranged according to the requirements of organizing the material for oral exposition, and the level of difficulty and the exposition were adjusted to the audience in Zurich. The aim of the course was to introduce some geometric and analytic concepts that have been found useful in advancing our understanding of spaces of nonpos itive curvature. In particular in recent years, it has been realized that often it is useful for a systematic understanding not to restrict the attention to Riemannian manifolds only, but to consider more general classes of metric spaces of generalized nonpositive curvature. The basic idea is to isolate a property that on one hand can be formulated solely in terms of the distance function and on the other hand is characteristic of nonpositive sectional curvature on a Riemannian manifold, and then to take this property as an axiom for defining a metric space of nonposi tive curvature. Such constructions have been put forward by Wald, Alexandrov, Busemann, and others, and they will be systematically explored in Chapter 2. Our focus and treatment will often be different from the existing literature. In the first Chapter, we consider several classes of examples of Riemannian manifolds of nonpositive curvature, and we explain how conditions about nonpos itivity or negativity of curvature can be exploited in various geometric contexts.

Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature

Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature
Author: Martin R. Bridson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 665
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3662124947

A description of the global properties of simply-connected spaces that are non-positively curved in the sense of A. D. Alexandrov, and the structure of groups which act on such spaces by isometries. The theory of these objects is developed in a manner accessible to anyone familiar with the rudiments of topology and group theory: non-trivial theorems are proved by concatenating elementary geometric arguments, and many examples are given. Part I provides an introduction to the geometry of geodesic spaces, while Part II develops the basic theory of spaces with upper curvature bounds. More specialized topics, such as complexes of groups, are covered in Part III.

Lectures on Spaces of Nonpositive Curvature

Lectures on Spaces of Nonpositive Curvature
Author: Werner Ballmann
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3034892403

Singular spaces with upper curvature bounds and, in particular, spaces of nonpositive curvature, have been of interest in many fields, including geometric (and combinatorial) group theory, topology, dynamical systems and probability theory. In the first two chapters of the book, a concise introduction into these spaces is given, culminating in the Hadamard-Cartan theorem and the discussion of the ideal boundary at infinity for simply connected complete spaces of nonpositive curvature. In the third chapter, qualitative properties of the geodesic flow on geodesically complete spaces of nonpositive curvature are discussed, as are random walks on groups of isometries of nonpositively curved spaces. The main class of spaces considered should be precisely complementary to symmetric spaces of higher rank and Euclidean buildings of dimension at least two (Rank Rigidity conjecture). In the smooth case, this is known and is the content of the Rank Rigidity theorem. An updated version of the proof of the latter theorem (in the smooth case) is presented in Chapter IV of the book. This chapter contains also a short introduction into the geometry of the unit tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold and the basic facts about the geodesic flow. In an appendix by Misha Brin, a self-contained and short proof of the ergodicity of the geodesic flow of a compact Riemannian manifold of negative curvature is given. The proof is elementary and should be accessible to the non-specialist. Some of the essential features and problems of the ergodic theory of smooth dynamical systems are discussed, and the appendix can serve as an introduction into this theory.

An Invitation to Alexandrov Geometry

An Invitation to Alexandrov Geometry
Author: Stephanie Alexander
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2019-05-08
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030053121

Aimed toward graduate students and research mathematicians, with minimal prerequisites this book provides a fresh take on Alexandrov geometry and explains the importance of CAT(0) geometry in geometric group theory. Beginning with an overview of fundamentals, definitions, and conventions, this book quickly moves forward to discuss the Reshetnyak gluing theorem and applies it to the billiards problems. The Hadamard–Cartan globalization theorem is explored and applied to construct exotic aspherical manifolds.

Gradient Flows

Gradient Flows
Author: Luigi Ambrosio
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2008-10-29
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 376438722X

The book is devoted to the theory of gradient flows in the general framework of metric spaces, and in the more specific setting of the space of probability measures, which provide a surprising link between optimal transportation theory and many evolutionary PDE's related to (non)linear diffusion. Particular emphasis is given to the convergence of the implicit time discretization method and to the error estimates for this discretization, extending the well established theory in Hilbert spaces. The book is split in two main parts that can be read independently of each other.

Mathematical Principles of Topological and Geometric Data Analysis

Mathematical Principles of Topological and Geometric Data Analysis
Author: Parvaneh Joharinad
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2023-07-29
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 303133440X

This book explores and demonstrates how geometric tools can be used in data analysis. Beginning with a systematic exposition of the mathematical prerequisites, covering topics ranging from category theory to algebraic topology, Riemannian geometry, operator theory and network analysis, it goes on to describe and analyze some of the most important machine learning techniques for dimension reduction, including the different types of manifold learning and kernel methods. It also develops a new notion of curvature of generalized metric spaces, based on the notion of hyperconvexity, which can be used for the topological representation of geometric information. In recent years there has been a fascinating development: concepts and methods originally created in the context of research in pure mathematics, and in particular in geometry, have become powerful tools in machine learning for the analysis of data. The underlying reason for this is that data are typically equipped with some kind of notion of distance, quantifying the differences between data points. Of course, to be successfully applied, the geometric tools usually need to be redefined, generalized, or extended appropriately. Primarily aimed at mathematicians seeking an overview of the geometric concepts and methods that are useful for data analysis, the book will also be of interest to researchers in machine learning and data analysis who want to see a systematic mathematical foundation of the methods that they use.

Modern Approaches to Discrete Curvature

Modern Approaches to Discrete Curvature
Author: Laurent Najman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2017-10-04
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3319580027

This book provides a valuable glimpse into discrete curvature, a rich new field of research which blends discrete mathematics, differential geometry, probability and computer graphics. It includes a vast collection of ideas and tools which will offer something new to all interested readers. Discrete geometry has arisen as much as a theoretical development as in response to unforeseen challenges coming from applications. Discrete and continuous geometries have turned out to be intimately connected. Discrete curvature is the key concept connecting them through many bridges in numerous fields: metric spaces, Riemannian and Euclidean geometries, geometric measure theory, topology, partial differential equations, calculus of variations, gradient flows, asymptotic analysis, probability, harmonic analysis, graph theory, etc. In spite of its crucial importance both in theoretical mathematics and in applications, up to now, almost no books have provided a coherent outlook on this emerging field.

Reshetnyak's Theory of Subharmonic Metrics

Reshetnyak's Theory of Subharmonic Metrics
Author: François Fillastre
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2023-10-20
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3031242556

Despite the fundamental role played by Reshetnyak's work in the theory of surfaces of bounded integral curvature, the proofs of his results were only available in his original articles, written in Russian and often hard to find. This situation used to be a serious problem for experts in the field. This book provides English translations of the full set of Reshetnyak's articles on the subject. Together with the companion articles, this book provides an accessible and comprehensive reference for the subject. In turn, this book should concern any researcher (confirmed or not) interested in, or active in, the field of bounded integral curvature surfaces, or more generally interested in surface geometry and geometric analysis. Due to the analytic nature of Reshetnyak's approach, it appears that his articles are very accessible for a modern audience, comparing to the works using a more synthetic approach. These articles of Reshetnyak concern more precisely the work carried by the author following the completion of his PhD thesis, under the supervision of A.D. Alexandrov. Over the period from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, the Leningrad School of Geometry, developed a theory of the metric geometry of surfaces, similar to the classical theory of Riemannian surfaces, but with lower regularity, allowing greater flexibility. Let us mention A.D. Alexandrov, Y.D. Burago and V.A. Zalgaller. The types of surfaces studied by this school are now known as surfaces of bounded curvature. Particular cases are that of surfaces with curvature bounded from above or below, the study of which gained special attention after the works of M. Gromov and G. Perelman. Nowadays, these concepts have been generalized to higher dimensions, to graphs, and so on, and the study of metrics of weak regularity remains an active and challenging field. Reshetnyak developed an alternative and analytic approach to surfaces of bounded integral curvature. The underlying idea is based on the theorem of Gauss which states that every Riemannian surface is locally conformal to Euclidean space. Reshetnyak thus studied generalized metrics which are locally conformal to the Euclidean metric with conformal factor given by the logarithm of the difference between two subharmonic functions on the plane. Reshetnyak's condition appears to provide the correct regularity required to generalize classical concepts such as measure of curvature, integral geodesic curvature for curves, and so on, and in turn, to recover surfaces of bounded curvature. Chapter-No.7, Chapter-No.8, Chapter-No.12 and Chapter-No.13 are available open access under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.