Euler's Elastica and Jacobi Elliptic Functions
The Pontryagin Maximum Principle turns the SE(2) geodesic problem into a pendulum ODE. Its solutions are the three families of Euler's elastica, parametrised exactly by Jacobi's elliptic functions sn, cn, dn — and their spatial period is 4K(k²), the complete elliptic integral of the first kind.
Deriving Euler's elastica from the Pontryagin Maximum Principle on SE(2): the pendulum equation, three curve families (inflectional, non-inflectional, Euler spiral), their Jacobi elliptic parametrisations, and the period 4K(k²).