Rolling balls and Octonions
In this semi-expository paper we disclose hidden symmetries of a classical nonholonomic kinematic model and try to explain geometric meaning of basic invariants of vector distributions.
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arXiv subjects
Andrei Agrachev
Publications and source records attributed to Andrei Agrachev.
Nurowski's conformal structures for (2,5)-distributions via dynamics of abnormal extremals
As was shown recently by P. Nurowski, to any rank 2 maximally nonholonomic vector distribution on a 5-dimensional manifold M one can assign the canonical conformal structure of signature (3,2). His construction is based on the properties of the special 12-dimensional coframe bundle over M, which was distinguished by E. Cartan during his famous construction of the canonical coframe for this type of distributions on some 14-dimensional principal bundle over M. The natural question is how "to see" the Nurowski conformal structure of a (2,5)-distribution purely geometrically without the preliminary construction of the canonical frame. We give rather simple answer to this question, using the notion of abnormal extremals of (2,5)-distributions and the classical notion of the osculating quadric for curves in the projective plane. Our method is a particular case of a general procedure for construction of algebra-geometric structures for a wide class of distributions, which will be described elsewhere. We also relate the fundamental invariant of (2,5)-distribution, the Cartan covariant binary biquadratic form, to the classical Wilczynski invariant of curves in the projective plane.
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On finite-dimensional projections of distributions for solutions of randomly forced PDE's
The paper is devoted to studying the image of probability measures on a Hilbert space under finite-dimensional analytic maps. We establish sufficient conditions under which the image of a measure has a density with respect to the Lebesgue measure and continuously depends on the map. The results obtained are applied to the 2D Navier--Stokes equations perturbed by various random forces of low dimension.
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Geometry of optimal control problems and Hamiltonian systems
These notes are based on the mini-course given in June 2004 in Cetraro, Italy, in the frame of a C.I.M.E. school. Of course, they contain much more material that I could present in the 6 hours course. The main goal is to give an idea of the general variational and dynamical nature of nice and powerful concepts and results mainly known in the narrow framework of Riemannian Geometry. This concerns Jacobi fields, Morse's index formula, Levi Civita connection, Riemannian curvature and related topics. I tried to make the presentation as light as possible: gave more details in smooth regular situations and referred to the literature in more complicated cases.
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On feedback classification of control-affine systems with one and two-dimensional inputs
The paper is devoted to the local classification of generic control-affine systems on an n-dimensional manifold with scalar input for any n>3 or with two inputs for n=4 and n=5, up to state-feedback transformations, preserving the affine structure. First using the Poincare series of moduli numbers we introduce the intrinsic numbers of functional moduli of each prescribed number of variables on which a classification problem depends. In order to classify affine systems with scalar input we associate with such a system the canonical frame by normalizing some structural functions in a commutative relation of the vector fields, which define our control system. Then, using this canonical frame, we introduce the canonical coordinates and find a complete system of state-feedback invariants of the system. It also gives automatically the micro-local (i.e. local in state-input space) classification of the generic non-affine n-dimensional control system with scalar input for n>2. Further we show how the problem of feedback-equivalence of affine systems with two-dimensional input in state space of dimensions 4 and 5 can be reduced to the same problem for affine systems with scalar input. In order to make this reduction we distinguish the subsystem of our control system, consisting of the directions of all extremals in dimension 4 and all abnormal extremals in dimension 5 of the time optimal problem, defined by the original control system. In each classification problem under consideration we find the intrinsic numbers of functional moduli of each prescribed number of variables according to its Poincare series.
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