Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (SIGMA)

Abstract

Motivated by control-affine systems in optimal control theory, we introduce the notion of a point-affine distribution on a manifold X - i.e., an affine distribution F together with a distinguished vector field contained in F. We compute local invariants for point-affine distributions of constant type when dim(X) = n, rank(F) = n - 1, and when dim(X) = 3, rank(F) = 1. Unlike linear distributions, which are characterized by integer- valued invariants - namely, the rank and growth vector - when dim(X) ≤ 4, we find local invariants depending on arbitrary functions even for rank 1 point-affine distributions on manifolds of dimension 2.

DOI

10.3842/SIGMA.2009.095

Publication Date

12-1-2009

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