HCRP project 2008
Movie of a geodesic pray in the plane
Geodesic flow in the plane
Office: SciCtr 434
The movie shows thee geodesic spray from the origin in the surface c ( cos(x) + sin(y-0.1) ). The amplitude c changes in time in this movie from 0 to 2. For c=0, the geodesics are lines. For larger c, caustics appear, places, where the exponential map is not invertible.


Credit: background music part of "Lascia Ch'io Pianga" by "Celtic Women".
Animation done in Mathematica using numerical computation of the geodesic lines.
Questions and comments to knill@math.harvard.edu
Oliver Knill | Department of Mathematics | Harvard University