Related papers: On Nurowski's conformal structure associated to a …
Given a maximally non-integrable 2-distribution ${\mathcal D}$ on a 5-manifold $M$, it was discovered by P. Nurowski that one can naturally associate a conformal structure $[g]_{\mathcal D}$ of signature (2,3) on $M$. We show that those…
As was shown recently by P. Nurowski, to any rank 2 maximally nonholonomic vector distribution on a 5-dimensional manifold M one can assign the canonical conformal structure of signature (3,2). His construction is based on the properties of…
We give a description of Nurowski's conformal structure for some examples of bracket-generating rank 2 distributions in dimension 5, aka $(2,3,5)$-distributions, namely the An-Nurowski circle twistor distribution for pairs of surfaces of…
To certain types of generic distributions (subbundles in a tangent bundle) one can associate canonical Cartan connections. Many of these constructions fall into the class of parabolic geometries. The aim of this article is to show how…
There are two well-known parabolic split $G_2$-geometries in dimension five, $(2,3,5)$-distributions and $G_2$-contact structures. Here we link these two geometries with yet another $G_2$-related contact structure, which lives on a…
We study the Doubrov--Zelenko symplectification procedure for rank $2$ distributions with $5$-dimensional cube -- originally motivated by optimal control theory -- through the lens of Tanaka--Morimoto theory for normal Cartan connections.…
We show that the solutions to the second-order differential equation associated to the generalised Chazy equation with parameters $k=2$ and $k=3$ naturally show up in the conformal rescaling that takes a representative metric in Nurowski's…
Nurowski showed that any generic 2-plane field $D$ on a 5-manifold $M$ determines a natural conformal structure $c_D$ on $M$; these conformal structures are exactly those (on oriented $M$) whose normal conformal holonomy is contained in the…
In our previous paper (see this arxiv math.DG/0402171) for generic rank 2 vector distributions on n-dimensional manifold (n greater or equal to 5) we constructed a special differential invariant, the fundamental form. In the case n=5 this…
The purpose of this note is to provide yet another example of the link between certain conformal geometries and ordinary differential equations, along the lines of the examples discussed by Nurowski in math.DG/0406400. In this particular…
The second fundamental form of Riemannian geometry is generalised to the case of a manifold with a linear connection and an integrable distribution. This bilinear form is generally not symmetric and its skew part is the torsion. The form…
We propose an analytic torsion for the Rumin complex associated with generic rank two distributions on closed 5-manifolds. This torsion behaves as expected with respect to Poincare duality and finite coverings. We establish anomaly…
For a conformal manifold, we describe a new relation between the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman and Graham and the holonomy of the normal conformal Cartan connection. This relation allows us to prove several results on the…
In the present paper we construct differential invariants for generic rank 2 vector distributions on n-dimensional manifold. In the case n=5 (the first case containing functional parameters) E. Cartan found in 1910 the covariant…
A PhD thesis written under supervision of Pawel Nurowski and defended at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw. We adress the problems of local equivalence and geometry of third order ODEs modulo contact, point and…
In this paper, we have reintroduced a new approach to conformal geometry developed and presented in two previous papers, in which we show that all n-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian metrics are conformal to a flat n-dimensional manifold as…
A recent result of M. Kourganoff states that if $D$ is a closed, reducible, non-flat, Weyl connection on a compact conformal manifold $M$, then the universal covering of $M$, endowed with the metric whose Levi-Civita covariant derivative is…
Using recent work of Bettiol, we show that a first-order conformal deformation of Wilking's metric of almost-positive sectional curvature on $S^2\times S^3$ yields a family of metrics with strictly positive average of sectional curvatures…
In the paper, we first study more general models, where $F$ has constant rank and is based on weak metric structures (introduced by the first author and R. Wolak), which generalize almost complex and almost contact metric $f$-contact…
We investigate the geometry of almost Robinson manifolds, Lorentzian analogues of almost Hermitian manifolds, defined by Nurowski and Trautman as Lorentzian manifolds of even dimension equipped with a totally null complex distribution of…