Elliptic Pre-Complexes, Hodge-like Decompositions and Overdetermined Boundary-Value Problems

TL;DR

The Saint-Venant compatibility problem is reframed in a broad geometric-analytic setting by introducing elliptic pre-complexes, which generalize classical elliptic complexes to sequences of varying-order operators that may fail to annihilate each other. The authors prove that any elliptic pre-complex can be corrected to a genuine complex ${oldsymbol{\mathcal{A}}_{ullet}}$ with zero-order corrections, enabling robust Hodge-like decompositions and explicit solvability criteria for overdetermined boundary-value problems, including gauge freedoms. This framework yields concrete applications to covariant de Rham complexes and Bianchi-type (Hessian and Calabi) complexes, resolving Saint-Venant-type compatibility and stress-potential questions in manifolds with boundary and arbitrary topology. The work clarifies integrability conditions, derives finite-dimensional cohomology modules ${oldsymbol{\mathscr{H}}}^k({oldsymbol{\mathcal{A}}_{ullet}})$, and establishes a systematic method to obtain gauge-fixed solutions in elasticity and related gauge theories. Overall, the results provide a unifying, analytic toolkit to address overdetermined systems in differential geometry, with potential implications for elasticity, relativity, and gauge fixing across curved backgrounds.

Abstract

We solve a problem posed by Calabi more than 60 years ago, known as the Saint-Venant compatibility problem: Given a compact Riemannian manifold, generally with boundary, find a compatibility operator for Lie derivatives of the metric tensor. This problem is related to other compatibility problems in mathematical physics, and to their inherent gauge freedom. To this end, we develop a framework generalizing the theory of elliptic complexes for sequences of linear differential operators $(A_{\bullet})$ between sections of vector bundles. We call such a sequence an elliptic pre-complex if the operators satisfy overdetermined ellipticity conditions, and the order of $A_{k+1}A_k$ does not exceed the order of $A_k$. We show that every elliptic pre-complex $(A_{\bullet})$ can be "corrected" into a complex $(\mathcal{A}_{\bullet})$ of pseudodifferential operators, where $\mathcal{A}_k - A_k$ is a zero-order correction within this class. The induced complex $(\mathcal{A}_{\bullet})$ yields Hodge-like decompositions, which in turn lead to explicit integrability conditions for overdetermined boundary-value problems, with uniqueness and gauge freedom clauses. We apply the theory on elliptic pre-complexes of exterior covariant derivatives of vector-valued forms and double forms satisfying generalized algebraic Bianchi identities, thus resolving a set of compatibility and gauge problems, among which one is the Saint-Venant problem.

Theorems & Definitions (90)

• Theorem : Induced elliptic complex
• Theorem : Hodge-like decomposition
• Theorem : Cohomology groups
• Theorem : Overdetermined boundary-value problem
• Theorem 1.1
• Theorem 1.2
• Theorem 1.3
• Theorem 1.4
• Theorem 1.5
• Theorem 1.6