Related papers: Riemannian properties of Engel structures
We study the geometry of Engel structures, which are 2-plane fields on 4-manifolds satisfying a generic condition, that are compatible with other geometric structures. A complex Engel structure is an Engel 2-plane field on a complex surface…
An Engel structure is a maximally non-integrable field of two-planes tangent to a four-manifold. Any two such structures are locally diffeomorphic. We investigate the space of global deformations of canonical Engel structures arising out of…
We study the geometry of Engel structures, which are 2-plane fields on 4-manifolds satisfying a generic condition, that are compatible with other geometric structures. A \em{Lagrangian} Engel structure is an Engel 2-plane field on a…
A holomorphic Engel structure determines a flag of distributions $\mathcal{W}\subset \mathcal{D}\subset \mathcal{E}$. We construct examples of Engel structures on $\mathbf{C}^4$ such that each of these distributions is hyperbolic in the…
A completely nonintegrable $2$-dimensional distribution on a $4$-manifold is called an Engel structure. A $4$-manifold with an Engel structure is called an Engel manifold. The developing map for an Engel manifold is very important tool to…
An Engel manifold is a 4-manifold with a completely non-integrable 2-distribution called Engel structure. I research the functorial relation between Engel manifolds and Contact 3-orbifolds. And I construct an Engel manifold that the…
We provide the first known family of examples of integrable homogeneous sub-Riemannian structures admitting strictly abnormal geodesics. These examples were obtained through the analysis of the equivalence problem for sub-Riemannian Engel…
We develop a construction of Engel stuctures on 4-manifolds based on decompositions of manifolds into round handles. This allows us to show that all parallelizable 4-manifolds admit an Engel structure. We also show that, given two Engel…
Recently there has been renewed interest among differential geometers in the theory of Engel structures. We introduce holomorphic analogues of these structures, and pose the problem of classifying projective manifolds admitting them.…
There is a remarkable type of field of two-planes special to four dimensions known as an Engel distributions. They are the only stable regular distributions besides the contact, quasi-contact and line fields. If an arbitrary two-plane field…
Engel structures on M x S^1 and M x I are studied in this paper, where M is a 3-dimensional manifold. We suppose that these structures have characteristic line fields parallel to the fibres, S^1 or I. It is proved that they are…
A contact twisted cubic structure (M,C,S) is a 5-dimensional manifold M together with a contact distribution C and a bundle S of twisted cubics that is compatible with the conformal symplectic form on C. In Engel's classical work, the Lie…
We classify complex surfaces $(M,\,J)$ admitting Engel structures $\mathcal{D}$ which are complex line bundles. Namely we prove that this happens if and only if $(M,\,J)$ has trivial Chern classes. We construct examples of such Engel…
We study pairs of Engel structures on four-manifolds whose intersection has constant rank one and which define the same even contact structure, but induce different orientations on it. We establish a correspondence between such pairs of…
We apply spectral sequences to derive both an obstruction to the existence of $n$-fold prolongations and a topological classification. Prolongations have been used in the literature in an attempt to prove that every Engel structure on…
H. Hertz called any manifold M with a given nonintegrable distribution {\it nonholonomic}. Vershik and Gershkovich stated and R. Montgomery proved that the space of germs of any nonholonomic distribution on M with an open and dense orbit of…
We give a sufficient condition for an $\mathbb{S}^1$-bundle over a $3$-manifold to admit an immersion (or embedding) into $\mathbb{C}^3$ so that its complex tangencies define an Engel structure. In particular, every oriented…
The aim of this paper is to extend basic understanding of Engel structures through developing geometric constructions which are canonical to a certain degree and the dynamics of Cauchy characteristics in the transverse spaces which may…
Let $\mathcal{E}^3\subset TM^n$ be a smooth $3$-distribution on a smooth manifold of dimension $n$ and $\mathcal{W}\subset\mathcal{E}$ a line field such that $[\mathcal{W},\mathcal{E}]\subset\mathcal{E}$. Under some orientability…
For every nonholonomic manifold, i.e., manifold with nonintegrable distribution, the analog of the Riemann tensor is introduced. It is calculated here for the contact and Engel structures: for the contact structure it vanishes (another…