Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents of Volume 1
- Contents of Volume 2
- Integrable Systems: A Celebration of Emma Previato’s 65th Birthday
- 1 Trace Ideal Properties of a Class of Integral Operators
- 2 Explicit Symmetries of the Kepler Hamiltonian
- 3 A Note on the Commutator of Hamiltonian Vector Fields
- 4 Nodal Curves and a Class of Solutions of the Lax Equation for Shock Clustering and Burgers Turbulence
- 5 Solvable Dynamical Systems in the Plane with Polynomial Interactions
- 6 The Projection Method in Classical Mechanics
- 7 Pencils of Quadrics, Billiard Double-Reflection and Confocal Incircular Nets
- 8 Bi-Flat F-Manifolds: A Survey
- 9 The Periodic 6-Particle Kac-van Moerbeke System
- 10 Integrable Mappings from a Unified Perspective
- 11 On an Arnold-Liouville Type Theorem for the Focusing NLS and the Focusing mKdV Equations
- 12 Commuting Hamiltonian Flows of Curves in Real Space Forms
- 13 The Kowalewski Top Revisited
- 14 The Calogero-Franc¸oise Integrable System: Algebraic Geometry, Higgs Fields, and the Inverse Problem
- 15 Tropical Markov Dynamics and Cayley Cubic
- 16 Positive One–Point Commuting Difference Operators∗†
12 - Commuting Hamiltonian Flows of Curves in Real Space Forms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents of Volume 1
- Contents of Volume 2
- Integrable Systems: A Celebration of Emma Previato’s 65th Birthday
- 1 Trace Ideal Properties of a Class of Integral Operators
- 2 Explicit Symmetries of the Kepler Hamiltonian
- 3 A Note on the Commutator of Hamiltonian Vector Fields
- 4 Nodal Curves and a Class of Solutions of the Lax Equation for Shock Clustering and Burgers Turbulence
- 5 Solvable Dynamical Systems in the Plane with Polynomial Interactions
- 6 The Projection Method in Classical Mechanics
- 7 Pencils of Quadrics, Billiard Double-Reflection and Confocal Incircular Nets
- 8 Bi-Flat F-Manifolds: A Survey
- 9 The Periodic 6-Particle Kac-van Moerbeke System
- 10 Integrable Mappings from a Unified Perspective
- 11 On an Arnold-Liouville Type Theorem for the Focusing NLS and the Focusing mKdV Equations
- 12 Commuting Hamiltonian Flows of Curves in Real Space Forms
- 13 The Kowalewski Top Revisited
- 14 The Calogero-Franc¸oise Integrable System: Algebraic Geometry, Higgs Fields, and the Inverse Problem
- 15 Tropical Markov Dynamics and Cayley Cubic
- 16 Positive One–Point Commuting Difference Operators∗†
Summary
Starting from the vortex filament flow introduced in 1906 by Da Rios, there is a hierarchy of commuting geometric flows on space curves. The traditional approach relates those flows to the nonlinear Schrödinger hierarchy satisfied by the complex curvature function of the space curve. Rather than working with this infinitesimal invariant, we describe the flows directly as vector fields on the manifold of space curves. This manifold carries a canonical symplectic form introduced by Marsden and Weinstein. Our flows are precisely the symplectic gradients of a natural hierarchy of invariants, beginning with length, total torsion, and elastic energy. There are a number of advantages to our geometric approach. For instance, the real part of the spectral curve is geometrically realized as the motion of the monodromy axis when varying total torsion. This insight provides a new explicit formula for the hierarchy of Hamiltonians. We also interpret the complex spectral curve in terms of curves in hyperbolic space and Darboux transforms. Furthermore, we complete the hierarchy of Hamiltonians by adding area and volume. These allow for the characterization of elastic curves as solutions to an isoperimetric problem: elastica are the critical points of length while fixing area and volume.
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- Integrable Systems and Algebraic Geometry , pp. 291 - 328Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020