Dept Math & Stat UiT, Forskningsparken B459
  07 Oct 2025 Tue 14:15-15:45

Wijnand Steneker (UiT)

"Conformal geodesics and their invariant variational description in 3D"

Conformal geodesics form an invariantly defined family of unparametrized curves in a conformal manifold generalizing unparametrized geodesics/paths of projective connections. In dimension 3 (the simplest, but most important from the viewpoint of physical applications) we demonstrate that the equation for unparametrized conformal geodesics is variational. We also discuss possible invariant Lagrangians for conformal geodesics in 3D and how to compute invariant Euler-Lagrange equations in a convenient way.

Based on joint works with Boris Kruglikov, Vladimir S. Matveev and Eivind Schneider.