Inductive approach to Cartan's moving frame method with applications to classical invariant theory

Abstract

This thesis is devoted to algorithmic aspects of the implementation of Cartan's moving frame method to the problem of the equivalence of submanifolds under a Lie group action. We adopt a general definition of a moving frame as an equivariant map from the space of submanifolds to the group itself and introduce two algorithms, which simplify the construction of such maps. The first algorithm is applicable when the group factors as a product of two subgroups G = BA, allowing us to use moving frames and differential invariants for the groups A and B in order to construct a moving frame and differential invariants for G. This approach not only simplifies the computations, but also produces the relations among the invariants of G and its subgroups. We use the groups of the projective, the affine and the Euclidean transformations on the plane to illustrate the algorithm. We also introduce a recursive algorithm, allowing, provided the group action satisfies certain conditions, to construct differential invariants order by order, at each step normalizing more and more of the group parameters, at the end obtaining a moving frame for the entire group. The development of this algorithm has been motivated by the applications of the moving frame method to the problems of the equivalence and symmetry of polynomials under linear changes of variables. In the complex or real case these problems can be reduced and, in theory, completely solved as the problem of the equivalence of submanifolds. Its solution however involves algorithms based on the Gröbner basis computations, which due to their complexity, are not always feasible. Nevertheless, some interesting new results were obtained, such as a classification of ternary cubics and their groups of symmetries, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for a homogeneous polynomial in three variables to be equivalent to xⁿ + yⁿ + zⁿ.