Horizontal curvatures of surfaces in 3D contact sub-Riemannian Lie groups
Differential Geometry
2026-03-10 v1
Abstract
In this paper we study horizontal curvatures for surfaces embedded in three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian Lie groups. Using a Riemannian approximation scheme, we derive explicit formulas for horizontal Gauss curvature, horizontal mean curvature, and symplectic distortion for surfaces embedded in three dimensional Lie groups with a sub-Riemannian structure obtained by a contact form. We focus on two primary examples: the Heisenberg group and the affine-additive group. We classify surfaces of revolution within these groups that exhibit constant horizontal curvatures, often expressing their profiles through elementary or elliptic integrals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.08330,
title = {Horizontal curvatures of surfaces in 3D contact sub-Riemannian Lie groups},
author = {Elia Bubani and Andrea Pinamonti and Ioannis D. Platis and Dimitrios Tsolis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.08330},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
33 pages, 2 figures