Magnetic Geodesics and Magnetic Maps
Marian Ioan Munteanu
University Alexandru Ioan Cuza of Iasi, Romanya
Geodesics on a Riemannian manifold (M, g) are given by a second order nonlinear differential
equation, obtained as critical point of the kinetic energy
$E(\gamma)=\int \frac{1}{2}\left|\gamma^{\prime}(s)\right|^{2} d s$
In this talk I will show first how the energy functional can be perturbed to obtain other
trajectories on a manifold, known as magnetic curves or magnetic geodesics.
Let now ω be a 1-form called the potential 1-form. For a smooth curve γ : [a, b] → M we
consider the functional $L H(\gamma)=\int_{a}^{b}\left(\frac{1}{2}\left\langle\gamma^{\prime}(t), \gamma^{\prime}(t)\right\rangle+\omega\left(\gamma^{\prime}(t)\right)\right) d t$
often called the Landau Hall functional for the curve γ, which is a perturbation of the kinetic
energy of the curve with the potential ω. The critical points of the LH functional satisfy the
Lorentz equation
$\nabla_{\gamma^{\prime}} \gamma^{\prime}-\phi\left(\gamma^{\prime}\right)=0$.
Here φ is a (1, 1) tensor field on M, called the Lorentz force and defined by g(φX, Y ) =
dω(X, Y ), for all X, Y tangent to M.
The notion of geodesic is generalized to harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds. The
second part of the talk is devoted to the Landau Hall functional for maps, as a perturbation
of the energy functional of a map:
$L H(f)=E(f)+\int_{N} \omega(d f(\xi)) d v_{h}$.
Definition. The map f is called magnetic with respect to ξ and ω if it is a critical point of
the Landau Hall integral defined above, i.e. the first variation d
$\left.\frac{d}{d \epsilon} L H\left(f_{\epsilon}\right)\right|_{\epsilon=0}$ is zero. This is
equivalent to
$\tau(f)=\phi\left(f_{*} \xi\right)$
This notion generalizes both magnetic curves and harmonic maps. It helps us also to define
new notions such as magnetic vector fields, magnetic endomorphisms on the tangent bundle,
magnetic submanifolds and many other.