In the present paper we consider generic Sub-Riemannian structures on the co-rank 1 non-holonomic vector distributions and introduce the associated canonical volume and ''horizontal'' area forms. As in the classical case, the Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces can be defined as the critical points of the '`horizontal'' area functional. We derive an intrinsic equation for minimal surfaces associated to a generic Sub-Riemannian structure of co-rank 1 in terms of the canonical volume form and the ``horizontal'' normal. The presented construction permits to describe the Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces in a generic Sub-Riemannian manifold and can be easily generalized to the case of non-holonomic vector distributions of greater co-rank.
The case of contact vector distributions, in particular the $(2,3)$-case, is studied more in detail. In the latter case the geometry of the Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces is determined by the structure of their characteristic points (i.e., the points where the hyper-surface touches the horizontal distribution) and characteristic curves. It turns out that the known classification of the characteristic points of the Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces in the Heisenberg group $H^1$ holds true for the minimal surfaces associated to a generic contact $(2,3)$ distribution. Moreover, we show that in the $(2,3)$ case the Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces are the integral surfaces of a certain system of ODE in the extended state space. In some particular cases the Cauchy problem for this system can be solved explicitly. We illustrate our results considering Sub-Riemannian minimal surfaces in the Heisenberg group and the group of roto-translations.
A Sasaki-like almost contact complex Riemannian manifold is defined as an almost contact complex Riemannian manifold which complex cone is a holomorphic complex Riemannian manifold. Explicit compact and non-compact examples are given. A canonical construction producing a Sasaki-like almost contact complex Riemannian manifold from a holomorphic complex Riemannian manifold is presented and called an $S^1$-solvable extension.
We consider a contact manifold with a pseudo-Riemannian metric and define a contact vector field intrinsically associated to this pair of structures. We call this new differential invariant the contact Riemannian curl. On a Riemannian manifold, Killing vector fields are those that annihilate the metric; a Killing $1$-form is obtained from a Killing vector field by lowering indices. We show that the contact Riemannian curl vanishes if the metric is of constant curvature and the contact structure is defined by a Killing $1$-form. We also show that the contact Riemannian curl has a strong similar…
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 study isometries in the contact sub-pseudo-Riemannian geometry. In particular we give an upper bound on the dimension of the isometry group of a general sub-pseudo-Riemannian manifold and prove that the maximal dimension is attained for the left invariant structures on the Heisenberg group.
We construct a canonically defined affine connection in sub-Riemannian contact geometry. Our method mimics that of the Levi-Civita connection in Riemannian geometry. We compare it with the Tanaka-Webster connection in the three-dimensional case.
We investigate contact Lie groups having a left invariant Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian metric with specific properties such as being bi-invariant, flat, negatively curved, Einstein, etc. We classify some of such contact Lie groups and derive some obstruction results to the existence of left invariant contact structures on Lie groups
We consider local geometry of sub-pseudo-Riemannian structures on contact manifolds. We construct fundamental invariants of the structures and show that the structures give rise to Einstein-Weyl geometries in dimension 3, provided that certain additional conditions are satisfied.
The conjecture of D.Blair says that there are no nonflat Riemannian metrics of nonpositive curvature compatible with a contact structure. We prove this conjecture for a certain class of contact structures on closed 3-dimensional manifolds and construct a local counterexample. We also prove that a hyperbolic metric on $\mathbb{R}^3$ cannot be compatible with any contact structure.
For a Riemannian $G$-structure, we compute the divergence of the vector field induced by the intrinsic torsion. Applying the Stokes theorem, we obtain the integral formula on a closed oriented Riemannian manifold, which we interpret in certain cases. We focus on almost harmitian and almost contact metric structures.
In this paper we obtain the structure equation of a contact-complex Riemannian submersion and give some applications of this equation in the study of almost cosymplectic manifolds with Kaehler fibres.
There are considered 4-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian spaces with inner products of signature (3,1) and (2,2). The objects of investigation are space-like and time-like hyperspheres in the respective cases. These hypersurfaces are equipped with almost contact B-metric structures. The constructed manifolds are characterized geometrically.
In this paper we consider surfaces of class $C^1$ with continuous prescribed mean curvature in a three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold and prove that their characteristic curves are of class $C^2$. This regularity result also holds for critical points of the sub-Riemannian perimeter under a volume constraint. All results are valid in the first Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^1$.
We consider a pair of smooth manifolds, which are the counterparts in the even-dimensional and odd-dimensional cases. They are separately an almost complex manifold with Norden metric and an almost contact manifolds with B-metric, respectively. They can be combined as the so-called almost contact complex Riemannian manifold. This paper is a survey with additions of results on differential geometry of canonical-type connections (i.e. metric connections with torsion satisfying a certain algebraic identity) on the considered manifolds.
In this paper a conformal classification of three dimensional left-invariant sub-Riemannian contact structures is carried out; in particular we will prove the following dichotomy: either a structure is locally conformal to the Heisenberg group $\mathbb H_3$, or its conformal classification coincides with the metric one. If a structure is locally conformally flat, then its conformal group is locally isomorphic to $SU(2,1)$.
In this paper we consider a set $E\subsetΩ$ with prescribed mean curvature $f\in C(Ω)$ and Euclidean Lipschitz boundary $\partial E=Σ$ inside a three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold $M$. We prove that if $Σ$ is locally a regular intrinsic graph, the characteristic curves are of class $C^2$. The result is shape and improves the ones contained in \cite{MR2583494} and \cite{GalRit15}.
We prove existence of regions minimizing perimeter under a volume constraint in contact sub-Riemannian manifolds such that their quotient by the group of contact transformations preserving the sub-Riemannian metric is compact.
Assuming that there exists a translating soliton $u_\infty$ with speed $C$ in a domain $Ω$ and with prescribed contact angle on $\partialΩ$, we prove that a graphical solution to the mean curvature flow with the same prescribed contact angle converges to $u_\infty +Ct$ as $t\to\infty$. We also generalize the recent existence result of Gao, Ma, Wang and Weng to non-Euclidean settings under suitable bounds on convexity of $Ω$ and Ricci curvature in $Ω$.
Contact Riemannian manifolds, whose complex structures are not necessarily integrable, are generalization of pseudohermitian manifolds in CR geometry. The Tanaka-Webster-Tanno connection plays the role of the Tanaka-Webster connection of a pseudohermitian manifold. Conformal transformations and the Yamabe problem are also defined naturally in this setting. By constructing the special frames and the normal coordinates on a contact Riemannian manifold, we prove that if the complex structure is not integrable, its Yamabe invariant on a contact Riemannian manifold is always less than the Yamabe in…
The author is planning if possible classify all three-dimensional $(κ,μ)$-manifolds wether contact metric, almost cosymplectic, para-contact metric, almost para-cosymplectic. Of course classification in contact or almost cosymplectic cases already is provdied. Up to authors knowledge there is no classification for para-contact or almost para-cosymplectic $(κ,μ)$. Conjecture is described by the author in coming paper structures provide classification. The main goal however is to show that these three dimensional manifolds are essentially building blocks of higher-dimensional manifolds. The othe…
Locally, isoperimetric problems on Riemannian surfaces are sub-Riemannian problems in dimension 3. The particular case of Dido problems corresponds to a class of singular contact sub-Riemannian metrics : metrics which have the charateristic vertor field as symmetry. We give a classification of the generic conjugate loci (i.e. classification of generic singularities of the exponential mapping) of a 1-parameter family of 3-d contact sub-Riemannian metrics associated to a 1-parameter family of Dido Riemannian problems.
We show that in the first sub-Riemannian Heisenberg group there are intrinsic graphs of smooth functions that are both critical and stable points of the sub-Riemannian perimeter under compactly supported variations of contact diffeomorphisms, despite the fact that they are not area-minimizing surfaces. In particular, we show that if $f:\mathbb{R}^2\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is a $C^1$-intrinsic function, and $\nabla^f\nabla^ff=0$, then the first contact variation of the sub-Riemannian area of its intrinsic graph is zero and the second contact variation is positive.
We study the behavior of the heat kernel of the Hodge Laplacian on a contact manifold endowed with a family of Riemannian metrics that blow-up the directions transverse to the contact distribution. We apply this to analyze the behavior of global spectral invariants such as the eta-invariant and the determinant of the Laplacian. In particular we prove that contact versions of the relative eta-invariant and the relative analytic torsion are equal to their Riemannian analogues and hence topological.
We solve the local equivalence problem for sub-Riemannian structures on (2n + 1)-dimensional manifolds. We show that two sub-Riemannian structures are locally equivalent if and only if? their corresponding canonical linear connections are equivalent. When n = 1, these connections coincide with the generalized Tanaka-Webster connection of the corresponding contact metric structure. We show that in dimension > 5, there may not be any contact metric manifolds associated with a given sub-Riemannian structure.
We compare different notions of curvature on contact sub-Riemannian manifolds. In particular we introduce canonical curvatures as the coefficients of the sub-Riemannian Jacobi equation. The main result is that all these coefficients are encoded in the asymptotic expansion of the horizontal derivatives of the sub-Riemannian distance. We explicitly compute their expressions in terms of the standard tensors of contact geometry. As an application of these results, we obtain a sub-Riemannian version of the Bonnet-Myers theorem that applies to any contact manifold.
Contact Riemannian manifolds, with not necessarily integrable complex structures, are the generalization of pseudohermitian manifolds in CR geometry. The Tanaka-Webster-Tanno connection on such a manifold plays the role of Tanaka-Webster connection in the pseudohermitian case. We prove the contact Riemannian version of the pseudohermitian Bochner-type formula, and generalize the CR Lichnerowicz theorem about the sharp lower bound for the first nonzero eigenvalue of the sub-Laplacian to the contact Riemannnian case.
In this paper we study the small time asymptotics for the heat kernel on a sub-Riemannian manifold, using a perturbative approach. We then explicitly compute, in the case of a 3D contact structure, the first two coefficients of the small time asymptotics expansion of the heat kernel on the diagonal, expressing them in terms of the two basic functional invariants $χ$ and $κ$ defined on a 3D contact structure.
The Newman-Penrose-Perjes formalism is applied to smooth contact structures on riemannian 3-manifolds. In particular it is shown that a contact 3-manifold admits an adapted riemannian metric if and only if it admits a metric with a divergence-free, constantly twisting, geodesic congruence. The shear of this congruence is identified with the torsion of the associated pseudohermitian structure, while the Tanaka-Webster curvature is identified with certain derivatives of the spin coefficients. The particular case where the associated riemannian metric is Einstein is studied in detail. It is found…
In this paper, we extend and complete the classification of the generic singularities of the 3D-contact sub-Riemmanian conjugate locus in a neighbourhood of the origin.
We study the sub-Riemannian exponential for contact distributions on manifolds of dimension greater or equal to 5. We compute an approximation of the sub-Riemannian Hamiltonian flow and show that the conjugate time can have multiplicity 2 in this case. We obtain an approximation of the first conjugate locus for small radii and introduce a geometric invariant to show that the metric for contact distributions typically exhibits an original behavior, different from the classical 3-dimensional case. We apply these methods to the case of 5-dimensional contact manifolds. We provide a stability analy…
We compute the asymptotic expansion of the volume of small sub-Riemannian balls in a contact 3-dimensional manifold, and we express the first meaningful geometric coefficients in terms of geometric invariants of the sub-Riemannian structure
We obtain some results on symmetries of sub-Riemannian surfaces. In case of contact sub-Riemannian surface we base on invariants found by Hughen \cite{Hughen}. Using these invariants, we find conditions under which a sub-Riemannian surface does not admit symmetries. If a surface admits symmetries, we show how invariants help to find them. It is worth noting, that the obtained conditions can be explicitly checked for a given contact sub-Riemannian surface. Also, we consider sub-Riemannian surfaces which are not contact and find their invariants along the surface where the distribution fails to …
We discuss contact geometry naturally related with optimal control problems (and Pontryagin Maximum Principle). We explore and expand the observations of [Ohsawa, 2015], providing simple and elegant characterizations of normal and abnormal sub-Riemannian extremals.
In this paper we establish a Gaffney type inequality, in $W^{\ell,p}$-Sobolev spaces, for differential forms on sub-Riemannian contact manifolds without boundary, having bounded geometry (hence, in particular, we have in mind non-compact manifolds). Here $p\in]1,\infty[$ and $\ell=1,2$ depending on the order of the differential form we are considering. The proof relies on the structure of the Rumin's complex of differential forms in contact manifolds, on a Sobolev-Gaffney inequality proved by Baldi-Franchi in the setting of the Heisenberg groups and on some geometric properties that can be pro…
We are concerned with stochastic processes on surfaces in three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifolds. Employing the Riemannian approximations to the sub-Riemannian manifold which make use of the Reeb vector field, we obtain a second order partial differential operator on the surface arising as the limit of Laplace-Beltrami operators. The stochastic process associated with the limiting operator moves along the characteristic foliation induced on the surface by the contact distribution. We show that for this stochastic process elliptic characteristic points are inaccessible, while hyperb…
We prove several relations between spectrum and dynamics including wave trace expansion, sharp/improved Weyl laws, propagation of singularities and quantum ergodicity for the sub-Riemannian (sR) Laplacian in the four dimensional quasi-contact case. A key role in all results is played by the presence of abnormal geodesics and represents the first such appearance of these in sub-Riemannian spectral geometry.
In this paper the notion of quasi-isometry between two Riemannian manifolds has been introduced. This idea is also imposed to study quasi-isometry between two almost contact metric manifolds. Moving further, some curvature properties of two quasi-isometrically embedded almost contact metric manifolds, $N(k)-$contact metric manifolds and Sasakian manifolds are investigated. Next, an illustrative example of a quasi-isometry between two Sasakian structures is constructed. Finally, a relation between the scalar curvature and the quasi-isometric constants for two quasi-isometric Riemannian manifold…
We consider a closed three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold. The objective of this note is to provide a precise description of the sub-Riemannian geodesics with large initial momenta: we prove that they "spiral around the Reeb orbits", not only in the phase space but also in the configuration space. Our analysis is based on a normal form along any Reeb orbit due to Melrose.
The present paper is devoted to the problem of (local) geodesic equivalence of Riemannian metrics and sub-Riemannian metrics on generic corank 1 distributions. Using Pontryagin Maximum Principle, we treat Riemannian and sub-Riemannian cases in an unified way and obtain some algebraic necessary conditions for the geodesic equivalence of (sub-)Riemannian metrics. In this way first we obtain a new elementary proof of classical Levi-Civita's Theorem about the classification of all Riemannian geodesically equivalent metrics in a neighborhood of so-called regular (stable) point w.r.t. these metrics.…
The goal of this paper is to study periodic geodesics for sub-Riemannian metrics on a contact 3D-manifold.We develop two rather independent subjects:1) The existence of closed geodesics spiraling around periodic Reeb orbits for a generic metric.2) The precise study of the periodic geodesics for a right invariant metric on a quotient of SL2(R)
Sub-Riemannian structures and non-transitive Cartan geometries via Lie groupoids
Centre Inria d’Université Côte d’Azur（阿基坦大学蔚蓝海岸Inria中心）；Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg（维尔茨堡朱利叶斯-马克西米利安大学）；CMUC, University of Coimbra（科英布拉大学数学研究中心）
In this article we study the sub-Riemannian geometry of the spheres $S^{2n+1}$ and $S^{4n+3}$, arising from the principal $S^1-$bundle structure defined by the Hopf map and the principal $S^3-$bundle structure given by the quaternionic Hopf map respectively. The $S^1$ action leads to the classical contact geometry of $S^{2n+1}$, while the $S^3$ action gives another type of sub-Riemannian structure, with a distribution of corank 3. In both cases the metric is given as the restriction of the usual Riemannian metric on the respective horizontal distributions. For the contact $S^7$ case, we give a…
