arXiv research

Study of marked contact Engel structures with geometric invariants.

The study examines the stability of Engel-like structures in higher dimensions.

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 contact three-manifolds. The main tool is Cartan's method of prolongation and d…

Paper studies Engel structures and automorphisms on 4-manifolds.

The paper explores geometric properties of Engel structures on 4-manifolds.

Modified Engel structures allow complete h-principle for overtwisted discs.

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 Engel structures and a class of weakly hyperbolic flows. This correspondence is ana…

Engel manifolds show transverse tori can be made to have various formal invariants.

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 $M\times\mathbb{S}^1$ with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers is determi…

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 on a four-manifold is slightly perturbed then it will be Engel at generic point…

Study null geodesics on specific spacetimes, finding contact manifolds and Engel geometry applications.

Study finds non-isotopic transverse tori in Engel manifolds.

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 characterized by contact structures on the cross section M, the twisting numbers, and Legend…

We give local descriptions of parabolic contact structures and show how their flat models yield explicit PDE having symmetry algebras isomorphic to all complex simple Lie algebras except $\mathfrak{sl}_2$. This yields a remarkably uniform generalization of the Cartan-Engel models from 1893 in the $G_2$ case. We give a …

Researchers compute contact structures for null geodesics on specific spacetimes.

Study magnetic flows on 3D contact sub-Riemannian manifolds using Rumin complex.

Modeling curvature-sensitive cells in visual cortex with geometric structures.

Notes on sub-Riemannian geometry equivalence problem.

Engel structures on complex surfaces are classified based on Chern classes.

Study of Lagrangian Engel structures on symplectic 4-manifolds.

Study complex Engel structures on complex surfaces, classifying homogeneous examples.

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 manifolds M_1,M_2 satisfying a certain condition on the characteristic foliation, t…

We call two Engel structures isotopic if they are homotopic through Engel structures by a homotopy that fixes the characteristic line field. In the present paper we define an isotopy invariant of Engel structures on oriented circle bundles over closed oriented three-manifolds and apply it to give an isotopy classificat…

Develops k-contact geometry theory for field theories.

The article classifies Engel structures up to homotopy.

Expanding knowledge of Engel structures via geometric constructions and dynamics analysis.

Study uses superalgebra homology to classify 4D Engel-like Lie algebras.

The study classifies prolongations up to Engel homotopy based on their formal data.

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 sense that it has no tangent copies of $\mathbf{C}$. We also construct two infinite…

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 structures. We formulate a criterion of strict abnormality in terms of structure …

Engel structures on bundles over 3-manifolds in complex 3-space.

Modeling curvature-sensitive cells in visual cortex using manifold geometry.

A flying saucer's flight is mathematically modeled with geometric structures.

The paper extends local h-principles to complex structures on Stein manifolds.

A simple proof is given of the following result first observed by J. Adachi: embedded circles tangent to the standard Engel structure on Euclidean 4-space are classified, up to isotopy via such embeddings, by their rotation number.

Engel knots map to formal knots without restrictions.

Classifies metric lines in Engel-type groups, a step towards solving sub-Riemannian manifold problems.

The Engel group's sub-Riemannian structure is analyzed, revealing unique geometric features.

We describe a complete system of invariants for 4-dimensional CR manifolds of CR dimension 1 and codimension 2 with Engel CR distribution by constructing an explicit canonical Cartan connection. We also investigate the relation between the Cartan connection and the normal form of the defining equation of an embedded En…

The notion of curvature discussed in this paper is a far going generalization of the Riemannian sectional curvature. It was first introduced by Agrachev, Barilari and Rizzi in arXiv:1306.5318, and it is defined for a wide class of optimal control problems: a unified framework including geometric structures such as Riem…

The left-invariant sub-Riemannian problem on the Engel group is considered. The problem gives the nilpotent approximation to generic nonholonomic systems in four-dimensional space with two-dimensional control, for instance to a system which describes motion of mobile robot with a trailer. The global optimality of extre…

Reduced sub-Riemannian time on a specific group structure.

New 4D shapes can't be opened like books.

We give two applications of the 2-Engel relation, classically studied in finite and Lie groups, to the 4-dimensional topological surgery conjecture. The A-B slice problem, a reformulation of the surgery conjecture for free groups, is shown to admit a homotopy solution. We also exhibit a new collection of universal surg…

Researchers found optimal paths on a specific geometric group.

A Goursat structure on a manifold of dimension n is a rank two distribution D such that dim D(i)=i+2, for i=0,...,n-2, where D(i) denotes the derived flag of D, which is defined by D(0)=D and D(i+1)=D(i)+[D(i),D(i)]. Goursat structures appeared first in the work of E. von Weber and E. Cartan, who have shown that on an …

Classification of homogeneous almost complex 4-manifolds with non-degenerate torsion bundle

We find all intrinsic measures of $C^{1,1}$ smooth submanifolds in the Engel group, showing that they are equivalent to the corresponding $d$-dimensional spherical Hausdorff measure restricted to the submanifold. The integer $d$ is the degree of the submanifold. These results follow from a different approach to negligi…