The first aim of the present paper is to compare various sub-Riemannian structures over the three dimensional sphere $S^3$ originating from different constructions. Namely, we describe the sub-Riemannian geometry of $S^3$ arising through its right Lie group action over itself, the one inherited from the natural complex structure of the open unit ball in $\comp^2$ and the geometry that appears when considering the Hopf map as a principal bundle. The main result of this comparison is that in fact those three structures coincide.
In the second place, we present two bracket generating distributions for the seven dimensional sphere $S^7$ of step 2 with ranks 6 and 4. These yield to sub-Riemannian structures for $S^7$ that are not present in the literature until now. One of the distributions can be obtained by considering the CR geometry of $S^7$ inherited from the natural complex structure of the open unit ball in $\comp^4$. The other one originates from the quaternionic analogous of the Hopf map.
The notion of a parallelizable distribution has been introduced and investigated. A non-integrable parallelizable distribution carries a natural sub-Riemannian structure. The geometry of this structure has been studied from the bi-viewpoint of absolute parallelism geometry and sub-Riemannian geometry. Two remarkable linear connections have been constructed on a sub-Riemannian parallelizable distribution, namely, the Weitzenböck connection and the sub-Riemannian connection. The obtained results have been applied to two concrete examples: the spheres $S^3$ and $S^7$.
We study a family of spheres with constant mean curvature (CMC) in the Riemannian Heisenberg group $H^1$. These spheres are conjectured to be the isoperimetric sets of $H^1$. We prove several results supporting this conjecture. We also focus our attention on the sub-Riemannian limit.
We determine the lengths of all closed sub-Riemannian geodesics on the three-sphere. Our methods are elementary and allow us to avoid using explicit formulas for the sub-Riemannian geodesics.
In this paper, we study biharmonic isometric immersions of a surface into and biharmonic Riemannian submersion from 3-dimensional Berger spheres. We obtain a classification of proper biharmonic isometric immersions of a surface with constant mean curvature into Berger 3-spheres. We also give a complete classification of proper biharmonic Hopf tori in Berger 3-sphere. For Riemannian submersions, we prove that a Riemannian submersion from Berger 3-spheres into a surface is biharmonic if and only if it is harmonic.
We prove the existence of immersed closed curves of constant geodesic curvature in an arbitrary Riemannian 2-sphere for almost every prescribed curvature. To achieve this, we develop a min-max scheme for a weighted length functional.
We consider a $3$-dimensional differentiable manifold with two circulant structures -- a Riemannian metric and an additional structure, whose third power is the identity. The structure is compatible with the metric such that an isometry is induced in any tangent space of the manifold. Further, we consider an associated metric with the Riemannian metric, which is necessary indefinite. We find equations of a sphere and of a circle, which are given in terms of the associated metric, with respect to the Riemannian metric.
A contact metric manifold is said to be $H$-contact, if the characteristic vector field is harmonic. We prove that the unit tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold $M$ equipped with the standard contact metric structure is $H$-contact if and only if $M$ is $2$-stein.
We consider the sub-Riemannian $3$-sphere $(\mathbb{S}^3,g_h)$ obtained by restriction of the Riemannian metric of constant curvature $1$ to the planar distribution orthogonal to the vertical Hopf vector field. It is known that $(\mathbb{S}^3,g_h)$ contains a family of spherical surfaces $\{\mathcal{S}_λ\}_{λ\geq 0}$ with constant mean curvature $λ$. In this work we first prove that the two closed half-spheres of $\mathcal{S}_0$ with boundary $C_0=\{0\}\times\mathbb{S}^1$ minimize the sub-Riemannian area among compact $C^1$ surfaces with the same boundary. We also see that the only $C^2$ solut…
We extend the Lyapunov-Schmidt analysis of outlying stable CMC spheres in the work of S. Brendle and the second-named author to the "far-off-center" regime and to include general Schwarzschild asymptotics. We obtain sharp existence and non-existence results for large stable CMC spheres that depend very delicately on the behavior of scalar curvature at infinity.
In this paper we study almost complex and almost para-complex Cayley structures on six-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian spheres in the space of purely imaginary octaves of the split Cayley algebra $\mathbf{Ca}'$. It is shown that the Cayley structures are non-integrable, their basic geometric characteristics are calculated. In contrast to the usual Riemann sphere $\mathbb{S}^6$, there exist (integrable) complex structures and para-complex structures on the pseudospheres under consideration.
We show two sphere theorems for the Riemannian manifolds with scalar curvature bounded below and the non-collapsed $\mathrm{RCD}(n-1,n)$ spaces with mean distance close to $\fracπ{2}$.
We construct a co-dimension $3$ completely non-holonomic sub-bundle on the Gromoll-Meyer exotic $7$ sphere based on its realization as a base space of a Sp(2)-principal bundle with the structure group Sp(1). The same method is valid for constructing a co-dimension 3 completely non-holonomic sub-bundle on the standard 7 sphere (or more general on a $4n+3$ dimensional standard sphere). In the latter case such a construction based on the Hopf bundle is well-known. Our method provides an alternated simple proof for the standard sphere $\mathbb{S}^7$.
Let $(M, g)$ be a complete Riemannian $3$-manifold that is asymptotic to Schwarzschild with positive mass and whose scalar curvature vanishes. We \textsl{unconditionally} characterize the large, embedded stable constant mean curvature spheres in $(M, g)$.
Inspired by the Lichnerowicz-Obata theorem for the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian, we define a new family of invariants $\{Ω_k(g)\}$ for closed Riemannian manifolds. The value of $Ω_k(g)$ delicately reflects the spherical part of the manifold. Indeed, $Ω_1(g)$ and $Ω_2(g)$ characterize the standard sphere.
In this paper we construct smooth Riemannian metrics on the sphere which admit smooth Zoll families of minimal hypersurfaces. This generalizes a theorem of Guillemin for the case of geodesics. The proof uses the Nash-Moser Inverse Function Theorem in the tame maps setting of Hamilton. This answers a question of Yau on perturbations of minimal hypersurfaces in positive Ricci curvature. We also consider the case of the projective space and characterize those metrics on the sphere with minimal equators.
The simple length spectrum of a Riemannian manifold is the set of lengths of its simple closed geodesics. We prove a theorem claimed by Lusternik: in any Riemannian 2-sphere whose simple length spectrum consists of only one element L, any geodesic is simple closed with length L.
We prove the existence of branched immersed constant mean curvature 2-spheres in an arbitrary Riemannian 3-sphere for almost every prescribed mean curvature, and moreover for all prescribed mean curvatures when the 3-sphere is positively curved. To achieve this, we develop a min-max scheme for a weighted Dirichlet energy functional. There are three main ingredients in our approach: a bi-harmonic approximation procedure to obtain compactness of the new functional, a derivative estimate of the min-max values to gain energy upper bounds for min-max sequences for almost every choice of mean curvat…
We show a Gromov-Hausdorff approximation to the product of the standard spheres $S^{n-p}\times S^p$ for Riemannian manifolds with positive Ricci curvature under some pinching condition on the eigenvalues of the Laplacian acting on functions and forms.
For a singular Riemannian foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on a Riemannian manifold, a curve is called horizontal if it meets the leaves of $\mathcal{F}$ perpendicularly. For a singular Riemannian foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on a unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^{n}$, we show that if $\mathcal{F}$ is a polar foliation or if $\mathcal{F}$ is given by the orbits of an infinitesimally polar action, then the horizontal diameter of $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ is $π$, i.e., any two points in $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ can be connected by a horizontal curve of length $\leqπ$.
We prove that the systolic ratio of a sphere of revolution $S$ does not exceed $π$ and equals $π$ if and only if $S$ is Zoll. More generally, we consider the rotationally symmetric Finsler metrics on a sphere of revolution which are defined by shifting the tangent unit circles by a Killing vector field. We prove that in this class of metrics the systolic ratio does not exceed $π$ and equals $π$ if and only if the metric is Riemannian and Zoll.
Given a sweepout of a Riemannian 2-sphere which is composed of curves of length less than L, we construct a second sweepout composed of curves of length less than L which are either constant curves or simple curves. This result, and the methods used to prove it, have several consequences; we answer a question of M. Freedman concerning the existence of min-max embedded geodesics, we partially answer a question due to N. Hingston and H.-B. Rademacher, and we also extend the results of [CL] concerning converting homotopies to isotopies in an effective way.
We study stable surfaces, i.e., second order minima of the area for variations of fixed volume, in sub-Riemannian space forms of dimension $3$. We prove a stability inequality and provide sufficient conditions ensuring instability of volume-preserving area-stationary $C^2$ surfaces with a non-empty singular set of curves. Combined with previous results, this allows to describe any complete, orientable, embedded and stable $C^2$ surface $Σ$ in the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^1$ and the sub-Riemannian sphere $\mathbb{S}^3$ of constant curvature $1$. In $\mathbb{H}^1$ we conclude that $Σ$ is a E…
