Related papers: Contact Path Geometries
A contact projective structure is a contact path geometry the paths of which are among the geodesics of some affine connection. In the manner of T.Y. Thomas there is associated to each contact projective structure an ambient affine…
Cartan's method of moving frames is briefly recalled in the context of immersed curves in the homogeneous space of a Lie group $G$. The contact geometry of curves in low dimensional equi-affine geometry is then made explicit. This delivers…
The chains studied in this paper generalize Chern-Moser chains for CR structures. They form a distinguished family of one dimensional submanifolds in manifolds endowed with a parabolic contact structure. Both the parabolic contact structure…
Contact Geometry is an odd dimensional analogue of Symplectic Geometry. This vague idea can actually be formalized in a rather precise way by means of a Symplectic-to-Contact Dictionary. The aim of this review paper is discussing the basic…
This paper constructs a family of coordinate systems about a point on a quaternionic contact manifold, called quaternionic contact pseudohermitian normal coordinates. Once defined, conformal variations of the quaternionic contact structure…
Following the Cartans's original method of equivalence supported by methods of parabolic geometry, we provide a complete solution for the equivalence problem of quaternionic contact structures, that is, the problem of finding a complete…
We derive the equations of chains for path geometries on surfaces by solving the equivalence problem of a related structure: sub-Riemannian geometry of signature $(1,1)$ on a contact 3-manifold. This approach is significantly simpler than…
Contact projective structures have been profoundly studied by D.J.F. Fox. He associated to a contact projective structure a canonical projective structure on the same manifold. We interpret Fox' construction in terms of the equivalent…
Lie contact structures generalize the classical Lie sphere geometry of oriented hyperspheres in the standard sphere. They can be equivalently described as parabolic geometries corresponding to the contact grading of orthogonal real Lie…
We investigate the local geometry of a pair of independent contact structures on 3-manifolds under maps that independently preserve each contact structure. We discover that such maps are homotheties on the contact 1-forms and we discover…
A notion of dual curve for pseudoholomorphic curves in 4--manifolds turns out to be possible only if the notion of almost complex structure structure is slightly generalized. The resulting structure is as easy (perhaps easier) to work with,…
We characterise the quotient surface graphs arising from symmetric contact systems of line segments in the plane and also from symmetric pointed pseudotriangulations in the case where the group of symmetries is generated by a translation or…
Motivated by the desire of finding a geometric interpretation to the Yamabe equation on groups of Heisenberg type, we define a geometric structure on manifolds modelled locally on these groups, which we call contact structure of Heisenberg…
We construct (infinitely many) examples in all dimensions of contactomorphisms of closed overtwisted contact manifolds that are smoothly isotopic but not contact-isotopic to the identity.
We address the problem of local geometry of third order ODEs modulo contact, point and fibre-preserving transformations of variables. Several new and already known geometries are described in a uniform manner by the Cartan method of…
A general model for geometric structures on differentiable manifolds is obtained by deforming infinitesimal symmetries. Specifically, this model consists of a Lie algebroid, equipped with an affine connection compatible with the Lie…
We study three-dimensional path geometries with nontrivial torsion of maximal rank. We introduce the notion of constant torsion and show that such path geometries are in one-to-one correspondence with certain cone structures modeled on…
We study low-dimensional problems in topology and geometry via a study of contact and Cauchy-Riemann ($CR$) structures. A contact structure is called spherical if it admits a compatible spherical $CR$ structure. We will talk about spherical…
We introduce and discuss (local) symmetries of geometric structures. These symmetries generalize the classical (locally) symmetric spaces to various other geometries. Our main tools are homogeneous Cartan geometries and their explicit…
Often it is possible to equip the space of all cone geodesics of a strongly convex cone structure with the structure of a smooth contact manifold. This generalizes the analogous notions for the space of light rays of a Lorentzian spacetime.…