Geodesic distance approximation using a surface finite element method for the $p$-Laplacian

We use the $p$-Laplacian with large $p$-values in order to approximate geodesic distances to features on surfaces. This differs from Fayolle and Belyaev's (2018) [1] computational results using the $p$-Laplacian for the distance-to-surface problem. Our approach appears to offer some distinct advantages over other popular PDE-based distance function approximation methods. We employ a surface finite element scheme and demonstrate numerical convergence to the true geodesic distance functions. We check that our numerical results adhere to the triangle inequality and examine robustness against geometric noise such as vertex perturbations. We also present comparisons of our method with the heat method from Crane et al. [2] and the classical polyhedral method from Mitchell et al. [3].

@article{potgieter2025_2505.14732,
  title={ Geodesic distance approximation using a surface finite element method for the $p$-Laplacian },
  author={ Hannah Potgieter and Razvan C. Fetecau and Steven J. Ruuth },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.14732},
  year={ 2025 }
}