Principal bundles of embeddings and nonlinear Grassmannians

Abstract

We present several principal bundles of embeddings of compact manifolds (with or without boundary) whose base manifolds are nonlinear Grassmannians. We study their infinite dimensional differential manifold structure in the Fr\'echet category. This study is motivated by the occurrence of such objects in the geometric Lagrangian formulation of free boundary continuum mechanics and in the study of the associated infinite dimensional dual pairs structures.