Noncommutative geometry and topology April 4, 2024 16:45–18:25, Moscow, Lomonosov Moscow State Univ, Main Building, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, auditorium 1604
Singularities of geodesic flows in $2D$ metrics with varying signature
Abstract:
The talk is devoted to singularities of geodesic flows in smooth 2-dimensional metrics with varying
signature (such metrics are also called pseudo-Riemannian). Generically, a pseudo-Riemannian metric
degenerated on a smooth curve, whose points are singular points of the corresponding geodesic flow.
The existence and uniqueness theorem at such points fails, whence geodesics cannot pass through a
degenerate point in all possible directions, but in some “admissible” directions only. For generic 2-
dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metric the number of admissible directions is 1 or 3, or 2 (at some
isolated points). This explains by the fact that the admissible directions correspond to real roots of a
certain cubic polynomial. The investigation of the behavior of geodesics at degenerate points is based
on the theory of local normal forms of vector fields with non-isolated singular points. A brief survey can
be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.09815.pdf