Geometric Interpretation of Brownian Motion on Riemannian Manifolds

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Lee, Taeyoung, Chirikjian, Gregory S.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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_version_ 1866912665698304000
author Lee, Taeyoung
Chirikjian, Gregory S.
author_facet Lee, Taeyoung
Chirikjian, Gregory S.
contents This paper presents a unified geometric framework for Brownian motion on manifolds, encompassing intrinsic Riemannian manifolds, embedded submanifolds, and Lie groups. The approach constructs the stochastic differential equation by injecting noise along each axis of an orthonormal frame and designing the drift term so that the resulting generator coincides with the Laplace--Beltrami operator. Both Stratonovich and Itô formulations are derived explicitly, revealing the geometric origin of curvature-induced drift. The drift is shown to correspond to the covariant derivatives of the frame fields for intrinsic manifolds, the mean curvature vector for embedded manifolds, and the adjoint-trace term for Lie groups, which vanishes for unimodular cases. The proposed formulation provides a geometrically transparent and mathematically consistent foundation for diffusion processes on nonlinear configuration spaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_19991
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Geometric Interpretation of Brownian Motion on Riemannian Manifolds
Lee, Taeyoung
Chirikjian, Gregory S.
Probability
Differential Geometry
Statistics Theory
This paper presents a unified geometric framework for Brownian motion on manifolds, encompassing intrinsic Riemannian manifolds, embedded submanifolds, and Lie groups. The approach constructs the stochastic differential equation by injecting noise along each axis of an orthonormal frame and designing the drift term so that the resulting generator coincides with the Laplace--Beltrami operator. Both Stratonovich and Itô formulations are derived explicitly, revealing the geometric origin of curvature-induced drift. The drift is shown to correspond to the covariant derivatives of the frame fields for intrinsic manifolds, the mean curvature vector for embedded manifolds, and the adjoint-trace term for Lie groups, which vanishes for unimodular cases. The proposed formulation provides a geometrically transparent and mathematically consistent foundation for diffusion processes on nonlinear configuration spaces.
title Geometric Interpretation of Brownian Motion on Riemannian Manifolds
topic Probability
Differential Geometry
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19991