Computing the Riemannian logarithm on the Stiefel manifold: metrics, methods and performance

Abstract: We address the problem of computing Riemannian normal coordinates on the real, compact Stiefel manifold of orthogonal frames. The Riemannian normal coordinates are based on the so-called Riemannian exponential and the Riemannian logarithm maps and enable to transfer almost any computational procedure to the realm of the Stiefel manifold. To compute the Riemannian logarithm is to solve the (local) geodesic endpoint problem. Instead of restricting the consideration to geodesics with respect to a single selected metric, we consider a family of Riemannian metrics introduced by H\"uper, Markina and Silva-Leite that includes the Euclidean and the canonical metric as prominent examples. As main contributions, we provide (1) a unified, structured, reduced formula for the Stiefel geodesics for the complete family of metrics, (2) a unified method to tackle the geodesic endpoint problem, (3) an improvement of the existing Riemannian log map under the canonical metric. The findings are illustrated by means of numerical examples, where the novel algorithms prove to be the most efficient methods known to this date.