Matthew Perlmutter

Conformal Hamiltonian systems

Vector fields whose flow preserves a symplectic form up to a constant, such as simple mechanical systems with friction, are called “conformal”. We develop a reduction theory for symmetric conformal Hamiltonian systems, analogous to symplectic reduction theory. This entire theory extends naturally to Poisson systems: given a symmetric conformal Poisson vector field, we show that it induces two reduced conformal Poisson vector fields, again analogous to the dual pair construction for symplectic manifolds. Conformal Poisson systems form an interesting infinite-dimensional Lie algebra of foliate vector fields. Manifolds supporting such conformal vector fields include cotangent bundles, Lie–Poisson manifolds, and their natural quotients.

On the geometry of reduced cotangent bundles at zero momentum

Abstract We consider the problem of cotangent bundle reduction for proper non-free group actions at zero momentum. We show that in this context the symplectic stratification obtained by Sjamaar and Lerman refines in two ways: (i) each symplectic stratum admits a stratification which we call the secondary stratification with two distinct types of pieces, one of which is open and dense and symplectomorphic to a cotangent bundle; (ii) the reduced space at zero momentum admits a finer stratification than the symplectic one into pieces that are coisotropic in their respective symplectic strata.

Lie group foliations: dynamical systems and integrators

Foliate systems are those which preserve some (possibly singular) foliation of phase space, such as systems with integrals, systems with continuous symmetries, and skew product systems. We study numerical integrators which also preserve the foliation. The case in which the foliation is given by the orbits of an action of a Lie group has a particularly nice structure, which we study in detail, giving conditions under which all foliate vector fields can be written as the sum of a vector field tangent to the orbits and a vector field invariant under the group action. This allows the application of many techniques of geometric integration, including splitting methods and Lie group integrators.

Geodesic Warps by Conformal Mappings

In recent years there has been considerable interest in methods for diffeomorphic warping of images, with applications in e.g. medical imaging and evolutionary biology. The original work generally cited is that of the evolutionary biologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, who demonstrated warps to deform images of one species into another. However, unlike the deformations in modern methods, which are drawn from the full set of diffeomorphisms, he deliberately chose lower-dimensional sets of transformations, such as planar conformal mappings. In this paper we study warps composed of such conformal mappings. The approach is to equip the infinite dimensional manifold of conformal embeddings with a Riemannian metric, and then use the corresponding geodesic equation in order to obtain diffeomorphic warps. After deriving the geodesic equation, a numerical discretisation method is developed. Several examples of geodesic warps are then given. We also show that the equation admits totally geodesic solutions corresponding to scaling and translation, but not to affine transformations.

On conformal variational problems and free boundary continua

We develop a framework for deriving governing partial differential equations for variational problems on spaces of conformal mappings. The main motivation is to obtain differential equations for the conformal motion of free boundary continua, of interest in image and shape registration. A fundamental tool in the paper, the Hodge–Morrey–Friedrichs decompositions of differential forms on manifolds with boundaries, is used to identify the orthogonal complement of the subspace of conformal mappings. A detailed presentation of these decompositions is included in the paper.The main result is the identification of the orthogonal complement of the subalgebra of conformal vector field inside the algebra of all vector fields of a compact flat 2–manifold. As a fundamental tool, the complete Hodge decomposition for manifold with boundary is used. The identification allows the derivation of governing differential equations for variational problems on the space of conformal vector fields. Several examples are given. In addition, the paper also gives a review, in full detail, of already known vector field decompositions involving subalgebras of volume preserving and symplectic vector fields.