Finding geodesics joining given points

L Noakes, E Zhang - Advances in Computational Mathematics, 2022 - Springer
Finding a geodesic joining two given points in a complete path-connected Riemannian
manifold requires much more effort than determining a geodesic from initial data. This is …

Finding extremals of Lagrangian actions

L Noakes, E Zhang - Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical …, 2023 - Elsevier
Given a smooth m-manifold M, a smooth Lagrangian L: TM→ R and endpoints x 0, x T∈ M,
we look for an extremal x:[0, T]→ M of the action∫ 0 TL (x (t), x ̇ (t)) dt satisfying x (0)= x 0 …