H\"ormander's condition for normal bundles on spaces of immersions

Abstract

Several representations of geometric shapes involve quotients of mapping spaces. The projection onto the quotient space defines two sub-bundles of the tangent bundle, called the horizontal and vertical bundle. We investigate in these notes the sub-Riemannian geometries of these bundles. In particular, we show for a selection of bundles which naturally occur in applications that they are either bracket generating or integrable.