arXiv subjects

Jakob Stoye

Publications and source records attributed to Jakob Stoye.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Shortest Geodesic Loops, Sectional Curvature, and Injectivity Radius of the Stiefel Manifold

We determine the length of the shortest nontrivial geodesic loops on the Stiefel manifold endowed with any member of the one-parameter family of Riemannian metrics introduced by H\"uper et al. (2021). This family includes, in particular, the canonical and Euclidean metrics. By combining existing and new bounds on the sectional curvature, we determine the exact value of the injectivity radius of the Stiefel manifold under a wide range of members of the metric family.

math.DG↗

arXiv2024

On the Injectivity Radius of the Stiefel Manifold: Numerical investigations and an explicit construction of a cut point at short distance

Arguably, geodesics are the most important geometric objects on a differentiable manifold. They describe candidates for shortest paths and are guaranteed to be unique shortest paths when the starting velocity stays within the so-called injectivity radius of the manifold. In this work, we investigate the injectivity radius of the Stiefel manifold under the canonical metric. The Stiefel manifold $St(n,p)$ is the set of rectangular matrices of dimension $n$-by-$p$ with orthogonal columns, sometimes also called the space of orthogonal $p$-frames in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Using a standard curvature argument, Rentmeesters has shown in 2013 that the injectivity radius of the Stiefel manifold is bounded by $\sqrt{\frac{4}{5}}π$. It is an open question, whether this bound is sharp. With the definition of the injectivity radius via cut points of geodesics, we gain access to the information of the injectivity radius by investigating geodesics. More precisely, we consider the behavior of special variations of geodesics, called Jacobi fields. By doing so, we are able to present an explicit example of a cut point. In addition, since the theoretical analysis of geodesics for cut points and especially conjugate points as a type of cut points is difficult, we investigate the question of the sharpness of the bound by means of numerical experiments.

math.NA↗

arXiv2024

The injectivity radius of the compact Stiefel manifold under the Euclidean metric

The injectivity radius of a manifold is an important quantity, both from a theoretical point of view and in terms of numerical applications. It is the largest possible radius within which all geodesics are unique and length-minimizing. In consequence, it is the largest possible radius within which calculations in Riemannian normal coordinates are well-defined. A matrix manifold that arises frequently in a wide range of practical applications is the compact Stiefel manifold of orthogonal $p$-frames in $\mathbb{R}^n$. We observe that geodesics on this manifold are space curves of constant Frenet curvatures. Using this fact, we prove that the injectivity radius on the Stiefel manifold under the Euclidean metric is $π$.

math.DG↗

arXiv2024

High curvature means low-rank: On the sectional curvature of Grassmann and Stiefel manifolds and the underlying matrix trace inequalities

Methods and algorithms that work with data on nonlinear manifolds are collectively summarized under the term `Riemannian computing'. In practice, curvature can be a key limiting factor for the performance of Riemannian computing methods. Yet, curvature can also be a powerful tool in the theoretical analysis of Riemannian algorithms. In this work, we investigate the sectional curvature of the Stiefel and Grassmann manifold. On the Grassmannian, tight curvature bounds are known since the late 1960ies. On the Stiefel manifold under the canonical metric, it was believed that the sectional curvature does not exceed 5/4. Under the Euclidean metric, the maximum was conjectured to be at 1. For both manifolds, the sectional curvature is given by the Frobenius norm of certain structured commutator brackets of skew-symmetric matrices. We provide refined inequalities for such terms and pay special attention to the maximizers of the curvature bounds. In this way, we prove for the Stiefel manifold that the global bounds of 5/4 (canonical metric) and 1 (Euclidean metric) hold indeed. With this addition, a complete account of the curvature bounds in all admissible dimensions is obtained. We observe that `high curvature means low-rank', more precisely, for the Stiefel and Grassmann manifolds under the canonical metric, the global curvature maximum is attained at tangent plane sections that are spanned by rank-two matrices, while the extreme curvature cases of the Euclidean Stiefel manifold occur for rank-one matrices. Numerical examples are included for illustration purposes.

math.NA↗