A geodesic triangle on

the sphere. The geodesics

are great circle arcs.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In mathematics, particularly differential geometry, a geodesic (/didizk/ JEE-o-
DEE-zik or /didsk/ JEE-o-DES-ik) is a generalization of the notion of a
"straight line" to "curved spaces". In the presence of an affine connection, a
geodesic is defined to be a curve whose tangent vectors remain parallel if they are
transported along it. If this connection is the Levi-Civita connection induced by a
Riemannian metric, then the geodesics are (locally) the shortest path between
points in the space.
The term "geodesic" comes from geodesy, the science of measuring the size and
shape of Earth; in the original sense, a geodesic was the shortest route between two
points on the Earth's surface, namely, a segment of a great circle. The term has been
generalized to include measurements in much more general mathematical spaces;
for example, in graph theory, one might consider a geodesic between two
vertices/nodes of a graph.
Geodesics are of particular importance in general relativity. Geodesics in general relativity describe the motion
of inertial test particles.
1 Introduction
1.1 Examples
2 Metric geometry
3 Riemannian geometry
3.1 Calculus of variations
4 Affine geodesics
4.1 Existence and uniqueness
4.2 Geodesic flow
4.3 Geodesic spray
4.4 Affine and projective geodesics
5 Applications
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
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A geodesic on a triaxial ellipsoid.
The shortest path between two points in a curved space can be found by writing the equation for the length of a
curve (a function f from an open interval of R to the manifold), and then minimizing this length using the
calculus of variations. This has some minor technical problems, because there is an infinite dimensional space
of different ways to parameterize the shortest path. It is simpler to demand not only that the curve locally
minimize length but also that it is parameterized "with constant velocity", meaning that the distance from f(s) to
f(t) along the geodesic is proportional to |st|. Equivalently, a different quantity may be defined, termed the
energy of the curve; minimizing the energy leads to the same equations for a geodesic (here "constant velocity"
is a consequence of minimisation). Intuitively, one can understand this second formulation by noting that an
elastic band stretched between two points will contract its length, and in so doing will minimize its energy. The
resulting shape of the band is a geodesic.
In Riemannian geometry geodesics are not the same as "shortest curves" between two points, though the two
concepts are closely related. The difference is that geodesics are only locally the shortest distance between
points, and are parameterized with "constant velocity". Going the "long way round" on a great circle between
two points on a sphere is a geodesic but not the shortest path between the points. The map t t
2
from the unit
interval to itself gives the shortest path between 0 and 1, but is not a geodesic because the velocity of the
corresponding motion of a point is not constant.
Geodesics are commonly seen in the study of Riemannian geometry and more generally metric geometry. In
general relativity, geodesics describe the motion of point particles under the influence of gravity alone. In
particular, the path taken by a falling rock, an orbiting satellite, or the shape of a planetary orbit are all
geodesics in curved space-time. More generally, the topic of sub-Riemannian geometry deals with the paths that
objects may take when they are not free, and their movement is constrained in various ways.
This article presents the mathematical formalism involved in defining, finding, and proving the existence of
geodesics, in the case of Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. The article geodesic (general
relativity) discusses the special case of general relativity in greater detail.
Examples
The most familiar examples are the straight lines in Euclidean geometry. On
a sphere, the images of geodesics are the great circles. The shortest path
from point A to point B on a sphere is given by the shorter arc of the great
circle passing through A and B. If A and B are antipodal points (like the
North Pole and the South Pole), then there are infinitely many shortest paths
between them. Geodesics on an ellipsoid behave in a more complicated way
than on a sphere; in particular, they are not closed in general (see figure).
In metric geometry, a geodesic is a curve which is everywhere locally a
distance minimizer. More precisely, a curve : I M from an interval I of
the reals to the metric space M is a geodesic if there is a constant v 0 such that for any t I there is a
neighborhood J of t in I such that for any t
1
,t
2
J we have
This generalizes the notion of geodesic for Riemannian manifolds. However, in metric geometry the geodesic
considered is often equipped with natural parameterization, i.e. in the above identity v = 1 and
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If the last equality is satisfied for all t
1
, t
2
I, the geodesic is called a minimizing geodesic or shortest path.
In general, a metric space may have no geodesics, except constant curves. At the other extreme, any two points
in a length metric space are joined by a minimizing sequence of rectifiable paths, although this minimizing
sequence need not converge to a geodesic.
In a Riemannian manifold M with metric tensor g, the length of a continuously differentiable curve
: [a,b] M is defined by
The distance d(p,q) between two points p and q of M is defined as the infimum of the length taken over all
continuous, piecewise continuously differentiable curves : [a,b] M such that (a) = p and (b) = q. With this
definition of distance, geodesics in a Riemannian manifold are then the locally distance-minimizing paths.
The minimizing curves of L in a small enough open set of M can be obtained by techniques of calculus of
variations. Typically, one introduces the following action or energy functional
It is then enough to minimize the functional E, owing to the CauchySchwarz inequality
with equality if and only if |d/dt| is constant.
The EulerLagrange equations of motion for the functional E are then given in local coordinates by
where are the Christoffel symbols of the metric. This is the geodesic equation, discussed below.
Calculus of variations
Techniques of the classical calculus of variations can be applied to examine the energy functional E. The first
variation of energy is defined in local coordinates by
The critical points of the first variation are precisely the geodesics. The second variation is defined by
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In an appropriate sense, zeros of the second variation along a geodesic arise along Jacobi fields. Jacobi fields
are thus regarded as variations through geodesics.
By applying variational techniques from classical mechanics, one can also regard geodesics as Hamiltonian
flows. They are solutions of the associated HamiltonJacobi equations, with (pseudo-)Riemannian metric taken
as Hamiltonian.
A geodesic on a smooth manifold M with an affine connection is defined as a curve (t) such that parallel
transport along the curve preserves the tangent vector to the curve, so



(1)
at each point along the curve, where is the derivative with respect to . More precisely, in order to define the
covariant derivative of it is necessary first to extend to a continuously differentiable vector field in an open
set. However, the resulting value of (1) is independent of the choice of extension.
Using local coordinates on M, we can write the geodesic equation (using the summation convention) as
where are the coordinates of the curve (t) and are the Christoffel symbols of the
connection . This is just an ordinary differential equation for the coordinates. It has a unique solution, given
an initial position and an initial velocity. Therefore, from the point of view of classical mechanics, geodesics
can be thought of as trajectories of free particles in a manifold. Indeed, the equation means that the
acceleration of the curve has no components in the direction of the surface (and therefore it is perpendicular to
the tangent plane of the surface at each point of the curve). So, the motion is completely determined by the
bending of the surface. This is also the idea of general relativity where particles move on geodesics and the
bending is caused by the gravity.
Existence and uniqueness
The local existence and uniqueness theorem for geodesics states that geodesics on a smooth manifold with an
affine connection exist, and are unique. More precisely:
For any point p in M and for any vector V in T
p
M (the tangent space to M at p) there exists a unique
geodesic : I M such that
and
,
where I is a maximal open interval in R containing 0.
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In general, I may not be all of R as for example for an open disc in R
2
. The proof of this theorem follows from
the theory of ordinary differential equations, by noticing that the geodesic equation is a second-order ODE.
Existence and uniqueness then follow from the PicardLindelf theorem for the solutions of ODEs with
prescribed initial conditions. depends smoothly on both p and V.
Geodesic flow
Geodesic flow is a local R-action on tangent bundle TM of a manifold M defined in the following way
where t R, V TM and denotes the geodesic with initial data . Thus, G
t
(V) = exp(tV) is the
exponential map of the vector tV. A closed orbit of the geodesic flow corresponds to a closed geodesic on M.
On a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, the geodesic flow is identified with a Hamiltonian flow on the cotangent
bundle. The Hamiltonian is then given by the inverse of the (pseudo-)Riemannian metric, evaluated against the
canonical one-form. In particular the flow preserves the (pseudo-)Riemannian metric , i.e.
.
In particular, when V is a unit vector, remains unit speed throughout, so the geodesic flow is tangent to the
unit tangent bundle. Liouville's theorem implies invariance of a kinematic measure on the unit tangent bundle.
Geodesic spray
The geodesic flow defines a family of curves in the tangent bundle. The derivatives of these curves define a
vector field on the total space of the tangent bundle, known as the geodesic spray.
More precisely, an affine connection gives rise to a splitting of the double tangent bundle TTM into horizontal
and vertical bundles:
The geodesic spray is the unique horizontal vector field W satisfying
at each point v TM; here

: TTM TM denotes the pushforward (differential) along the projection

: TM M associated to the tangent bundle.
More generally, the same construction allows one to construct a vector field for any Ehresmann connection on
the tangent bundle. For the resulting vector field to be a spray (on the deleted tangent bundle TM \ {0}) it is
enough that the connection be equivariant under positive rescalings: it need not be linear. That is, (cf.
Ehresmann connection#Vector bundles and covariant derivatives) it is enough that the horizontal distribution
satisfy
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for every X TM \ {0} and > 0. Here d(S

) is the pushforward along the scalar homothety

A particular case of a non-linear connection arising in this manner is that associated to a Finsler manifold.
Affine and projective geodesics
Equation (1) is invariant under affine reparameterizations; that is, parameterizations of the form
where a and b are constant real numbers. Thus apart from specifying a certain class of embedded curves, the
geodesic equation also determines a preferred class of parameterizations on each of the curves. Accordingly,
solutions of (1) are called geodesics with affine parameter.
An affine connection is determined by its family of affinely parameterized geodesics, up to torsion (Spivak
1999, Chapter 6, Addendum I). The torsion itself does not, in fact, affect the family of geodesics, since the
geodesic equation depends only on the symmetric part of the connection. More precisely, if are two
connections such that the difference tensor
is skew-symmetric, then and have the same geodesics, with the same affine parameterizations.
Furthermore, there is a unique connection having the same geodesics as , but with vanishing torsion.
Geodesics without a particular parameterization are described by a projective connection.
Geodesics serve as the basis to calculate:
horizontal distances on or near Earth; see Earth geodesics
mapping images on surfaces, for rendering; see UV mapping
robot motion planning (e.g., when painting car parts); see Shortest path problem
Basic introduction to the mathematics of curved
spacetime
Clairaut's relation
Differential geometry of curves
Exponential map
HopfRinow theorem
Intrinsic metric
Jacobi field
Zoll surface
Spivak, Michael (1999), A Comprehensive introduction to differential geometry (Volume 2), Houston, TX:
Geodesic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic
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Publish or Perish, ISBN 978-0-914098-71-3
Adler, Ronald; Bazin, Maurice; Schiffer, Menahem (1975), Introduction to General Relativity (2nd ed.),
New York: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0-07-000423-8. See chapter 2.
Abraham, Ralph H.; Marsden, Jerrold E. (1978), Foundations of mechanics, London: Benjamin-
Cummings, ISBN 978-0-8053-0102-1. See section 2.7.
Jost, Jrgen (2002), Riemannian Geometry and Geometric Analysis, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag,
ISBN 978-3-540-42627-1. See section 1.4.
Kobayashi, Shoshichi; Nomizu, Katsumi (1996), Foundations of Differential Geometry, Vol. 1 (New ed.),
Wiley-Interscience, ISBN 0-471-15733-3.
Landau, L. D.; Lifshitz, E. M. (1975), Classical Theory of Fields, Oxford: Pergamon,
ISBN 978-0-08-018176-9. See section 87.
Misner, Charles W.; Thorne, Kip; Wheeler, John Archibald (1973), Gravitation, W. H. Freeman,
ISBN 978-0-7167-0344-0
Ortn, Toms (2004), Gravity and strings, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-82475-0. Note
especially pages 7 and 10.
Volkov, Yu.A. (2001), "Geodesic line" (http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=G/g044120),
in Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4.
Weinberg, Steven (1972), Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General
Theory of Relativity, New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-471-92567-5. See chapter 3.
Caltech Tutorial on Relativity (http://www.black-holes.org/relativity5.html) A nice, simple explanation
of geodesics with accompanying animation.
Geodesics Revisited (http://www.cmsim.eu/papers_pdf/january_2012_papers
/25_CMSIM_2012_Pokorny_1_281-298.pdf) Introduction to geodesics including two ways of
derivation of the equation of geodesic with applications in geometry (geodesic on a sphere and on a
torus), mechanics (brachistochrone) and optics (light beam in inhomogeneous medium).
Geodesics on a parametric surface -- sage interact (http://wiki.sagemath.org/interact
/geometry#Geodesics_on_a_parametric_surface) Interactive Sagemath worksheet to calculate and
illustrate geodesics on parametric surfaces.
Totally geodesic submanifold (http://www.map.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/Totally_geodesic_submanifold) at the
Manifold Atlas
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