Browsing by Subject "Lie groups"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Analysis of geometric flows, with applications to optimal homogeneous geometries(2011-05) Williams, Michael Bradford; Knopf, Dan, 1959-; Freed, Daniel S.; Neitzke, Andrew; Sadun, Lorenzo; Uhlenbeck, KarenThis dissertation considers several problems related to Ricci flow, including the existence and behavior of solutions. The first goal is to obtain explicit, coordinate-based descriptions of Ricci flow solutions--especially those corresponding to Ricci solitons--on two classes of nilpotent Lie groups. On the odd-dimensional classical Heisenberg groups, we determine the asymptotics of Ricci flow starting at any metric, and use Lott's blowdown method to demonstrate convergence to soliton metrics. On the groups of real unitriangular matrices, which are more complicated, we describe the solitons and corresponding solutions using a suitable ansatz. Next, we consider solsolitons involving the nilsolitons in the Heisenberg case above. This uses work of Lauret, which characterizes solsolitons as certain extensions of nilsolitons, and work of Will, which demonstrates that the space of solsolitons extensions of a given nilsoliton is parametrized by the quotient of a Grassmannian by a finite group. We determine these spaces of solsoliton extensions of Heisenberg nilsolitons, and we also explicitly describe many-parameter families of these solsolitons in dimensions greater than three. Finally, we explore Ricci flow coupled with harmonic map flow, both as it arises naturally in certain bundle constructions related to Ricci flow and as a geometric flow in its own right. In the first case, we generalize a theorem of Knopf that demonstrates convergence and stability of certain locally R[superscript N]-invariant Ricci flow solutions. In the second case, we prove a version of Hamilton's compactness theorem for the coupled flow, and then generalize it to the category of etale Riemannian groupoids. We also provide a detailed example of solutions to the flow on the three-dimensional Heisenberg group.Item The higher flows of harmonic maps(2007) Gagliardo, Michael Sebastian; Uhlenbeck, Karen K.Item The higher flows of harmonic maps(2007-05) Gagliardo, Michael Sebastian, 1976-; Uhlenbeck, KarenItem Spatially-homogeneous Vlasov-Einstein dynamics(2008-12) Okabe, Takahide; Morrison, Philip J.The influence of matter described by the Vlasov equation, on the evolution of anisotropy in the spatially-homogeneous universes, called the Bianchi cosmologies, is studied. Due to the spatial-homogeneity, the Einstein equations for each Bianchi Type are reduced to a set of coupled ordinary differential equations, which has Hamiltonian form with the metric components being the canonical coordinates. In the vacuum Bianchi cosmologies, it is known that a curvature potential, which comes from the symmetries of the three-dimensional Lie groups, determines the basic properties of the evolution of anisotropy. In this work, matter potentials are constructed for Vlasov matter. They are obtained by first introducing a new matter action principle for the Vlasov equation, in terms of a conjugate pair of functions, and then enforcing the symmetry to obtain a reduction. This yields an expression for the matter potential in terms of the phase space density, which is further reduced by assuming cold streaming matter. Some vacuum Bianchi cosmologies and Type I with Vlasov matter are compared. It is shown that the Vlasov-matter potential for cold streaming matter results in qualitatively distinct dynamics from the well-known vacuum Bianchi cosmologies.