Generalized bounded deformation in non-Euclidean settings

Abstract

We introduce a new space of generalized functions of bounded deformation $GB{D}_F$, made of functions u whose one-dimensional slice $u(\gamma )\cdot \dot{\gamma }$ has bounded variation in a generalized sense for all curves $\gamma$ solution of the second order ODE $\ddot{\gamma }=F(\gamma ,\dot{\gamma })$ for a fixed field F. For $u\in GB{D}_F$ we study the structure of the jump set in connection its slices and prove the existence of a curvilinear approximate symmetric gradient. With a particular choice of F in terms of the Christoffel symbols of a Riemannian manifold M, we are able to define and recover similar properties for a space of 1-forms on M which have generalized bounded deformation in a suitable sense.