Vortex motion and geometric function theory: the role of connections

We formulate the equations for point vortex dynamics on a closed two dimensional Riemann manifold in the language of affine and other kinds of connections. The speed of a vortex is then expressed in terms of the difference between an affine connection derived from the coordinate Robin function and the Levi-Civita connection associated to the Riemannian metric. A Hamiltonian formulation of the same dynamics is also given. The relevant Hamiltonian function consists of two main terms. One of the terms is the well-known quadratic form based on a matrix whose entries are Green and Robin functions, while the other term describes the energy contribution from those circulating flows which are not implicit in the Green functions. One main issue of the paper is the clarification of the somewhat intricate exchanges of energy between these two terms of the Hamiltonian.