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Sebastian
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Yes, take the the trivial connection with respect to the left trivialisation of the tangent bundle. Then, all of your curves $\gamma$ are geodesics, but there are no further geodesics.

Some more details: the tangent bundle of every (matrix) lie group is trivial: consider a basis $e_1,..,e_n$ of you Lie algebra, and the globally well-defined frame $X_1,..,X_n$ determined by $X_k(g)=g e_k$, where the right hand side is just the matrix product (if you have a matrix Lie group). Then you can define a unique connection by declaring the frame to be parallel. Equivalently, this means that all Cristoffel symbols vanish identically. This gives you a flat connection (with non-trivial torsion unless the Lie algebra is commutative, ie the lie bracket vanishes). Then, for any $v$ in the Lie group, the vector field $g\mapsto gv$ is parallel. Hence, your curves $\gamma$ are all geodesic.

If you want a torsion free connection, just add half of the commutator as a global connection 1-form. As this is skew, you get the same geodesics, but by construction this connection has vanishing torsion.

Yes, take the the trivial connection with respect to the left trivialisation of the tangent bundle. Then, all of your curves $\gamma$ are geodesics, but there are no further geodesics.

Yes, take the the trivial connection with respect to the left trivialisation of the tangent bundle. Then, all of your curves $\gamma$ are geodesics, but there are no further geodesics.

Some more details: the tangent bundle of every (matrix) lie group is trivial: consider a basis $e_1,..,e_n$ of you Lie algebra, and the globally well-defined frame $X_1,..,X_n$ determined by $X_k(g)=g e_k$, where the right hand side is just the matrix product (if you have a matrix Lie group). Then you can define a unique connection by declaring the frame to be parallel. Equivalently, this means that all Cristoffel symbols vanish identically. This gives you a flat connection (with non-trivial torsion unless the Lie algebra is commutative, ie the lie bracket vanishes). Then, for any $v$ in the Lie group, the vector field $g\mapsto gv$ is parallel. Hence, your curves $\gamma$ are all geodesic.

If you want a torsion free connection, just add half of the commutator as a global connection 1-form. As this is skew, you get the same geodesics, but by construction this connection has vanishing torsion.

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Sebastian
  • 6.8k
  • 1
  • 26
  • 32

Yes, take the the trivial connection with respect to the left trivialisation of the tangent bundle. Then, all of your curves $\gamma$ are geodesics, but there are no further geodesics.