Controllability and diffeomorphism groups on manifolds with boundary

Abstract

In this article we consider diffeomorphism groups of manifolds with smooth boundary. We show that the diffeomorphism groups of the manifold and its boundary fit into a short exact sequence which admits local sections. In other words, they form an infinite-dimensional fibre bundle. Manifolds with boundary are of interest in numerical analysis and with a view towards applications in machine learning we establish controllability results for families of vector fields. This generalises older results due to Agrachev and Caponigro in the boundary-less case. Our results show in particular that the diffeomorphism group of a manifold with smooth boundary is generated by the image of the exponential map.

23 pages, v2: corrected typos and minor mistakes, added references, stronger Theorem 1.2 due to weakened requirements, rest of the results remain valid