9.3 Example: gradient lines [03WA]
Original official author HTML, exact retained edition. Historical TeX conversion verdicts remain unchanged. Cited-edition alignment and mathematical self-containment are not assessed.
Complete original source context ยท Original author HTML
9.3 Example: gradient lines
Here we offer a construction of the set of lines satisfying the above axioms.
Let us use the standard as a model around each in order to fix a structure of smooth manifold on the whole surface . Let denotes the covering of such that the fiber over is .
Let us fix a generic smooth metric on . By the pull-back it gives a metric on . Notice that there is a canonical closed -form on such that , where . Using the metric we obtain dual to gradient vector field on .
For any and a choice of 1-form in local coordinates, we take the unique integral line of starting at . Set will be the set of all lines obtained in this way. Each line carries a covariantly constant closed -form . Using Axiom 2 as a definition, we obtain a canonical parametrization of each line by the time parameter . Since the metric is generic, a line cannot return to a point in .
Then we proceed inductively. If two already constructed lines meet at we produce a new integral line of with the direction covector satisfying the condition 3b) for any pair of coprime positive integers . In this way we construct a set of lines satisfying all the axioms. The only non-trivial thing to check is that for each line values of the parameter are in one-to-one correspondence with the interval . In order to see this we observe that the length of each line is infinite. Indeed, an integral curve of cannot have a limiting point in (since the flow generated by is smooth, and the lengths of tangent vectors are bounded from below because of the integrality of -forms).
We conclude that there exists a set of lines satisfying Axioms 1-7.