Let $mathcal{M}$ be a real, compact, orientable manifold and let $X$ be a vector field on $mathcal{M}$. Consider the functional
$$E(f) = int_{mathcal{M}} X_p(f)^2 dV$$
where $X_p(f)$ is the directional (Lie) derivative of $f$ along $X$ at the point $p$ and $dV$ is a volume form on $mathcal{M}$ -- this functional essentially measures the total amount of change in $f$ along $X$ over all of $mathcal{M}$ in the $L^2$ sense. Then $delta E(f)$ is a differential operator whose eigenspectrum
$$delta E(f) = lambda f$$
(for $lambda in mathbb{R}$) yields the critical points of $E$ over the set of functions with unit norm. Is there an established name for this operator (or functional) and/or its corresponding eigenspectrum?
The prototype for this operator is Dirichlet's energy
$$int_{mathcal{M}} ||nabla f||^2 dV$$
which has as its (unit-norm) critical points the Laplacian eigenspectrum
$$nabla^2 f = lambda f,$$
the main difference being that Dirichlet's energy measures the total gradient, i.e., the change in all directions, rather than just the change along a particular direction at each point.
No comments:
Post a Comment