Quotient elastic metrics on the manifold of arc-length parameterized plane loops

Abstract

We study the pull-back of the 2-parameter family of quotient elastic metrics introduced in Mio-Srivastava-Joshi on the space of arc-length parameterized loops. This point of view has the advantage of concentrating on the manifold of arc-length parameterized curves, which is a very natural manifold when the analysis of un-parameterized curves is concerned, pushing aside the tricky quotient procedure detailed in Lahiri-Robinson-Klassen of the preshape space of parameterized curves by the reparameterization (semi-)group. In order to study the problem of finding geodesics between two given arc-length parameterized loops under these quotient elastic metrics, we give a precise computation of the gradient of the energy functional in the smooth case as well as a discretization of it, and implement a path-straightening method. This allows us to have a better understanding of how the landscape of the energy functional varies with respect to the parameters.