On local solubility of Bao--Ratiu equations on surfaces related to the geometry of diffeomorphism group

Abstract

We are concerned with the existence of asymptotic directions for the group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms of a closed 2-dimensional surface $(\Sigma ,g)$ within the full diffeomorphism group, described by the Bao--Ratiu equations, a system of second-order PDEs introduced in [On a non-linear equation related to the geometry of the diffeomorphism group, Pacific J. Math. 158 (1993); On the geometric origin and the solvability of a degenerate Monge--Ampere equation, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 54 (1993)]. It is known [The Bao--Ratiu equations on surfaces, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 449 (1995)] that asymptotic directions cannot exist globally on any $\Sigma$ with positive curvature. To complement this result, we prove that asymptotic directions always exist locally about a point $x_0\in \Sigma$ in either of the following cases (where $K$ is the Gaussian curvature on $\Sigma$): (a), $K(x_0)>0$; (b) $K(x_0)<0$; or (c), $K$ changes sign cleanly at $x_0$, i.e., $K(x_0)=0$ and $\nabla K(x_0)\ne 0$. The key ingredient of the proof is the analysis following Han [On the isometric embedding of surfaces with Gauss curvature changing sign cleanly, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 58 (2005)] of a degenerate Monge--Ampère equation -- which is of the elliptic, hyperbolic, and mixed types in cases (a), (b), and (c), respectively -- locally equivalent to the Bao--Ratiu equations.