Existence, characterization and stability of Pansu spheres in sub-Riemannian 3-space forms (Q889747)

A contact sub-Riemannian manifold is a manifold \(M\) endowed by a contact distribution \(H\) and a metric \(g_h\) on \(H\). \((M, H, g_h)\) is called Sasakian if the flow of the Reeb vector field \(T\) consists of isometries of \((H, g_H)\). The main goal of the paper is to extend \textit{P. Pansu}'s conjecture [in: Differential geometry on homogeneous spaces, Conf. Torino/ItalyRend. Semin. Mat., Torino, Fasc. Spec., 159--174 (1983; Zbl 0634.53034)] concerning the isoperimetric problem in the Heisenberg group, which is a flat sub-Riemannian manifold, to sub-Riemannian space forms \(M(\kappa)\), i.e., to \(3\)-dimensional Sasakian sub-Riemannian manifolds of constant Webster scalar curvature \(\kappa\). The authors prove that in \(M(k)\), for any \(\lambda \geq 0\) such that \(\lambda^2 + \kappa > 0\), the subset \[ S_\lambda(p) = \left\{ \gamma(s); v \in H_p, |v| = 1, 0 \leq s \leq \pi/\sqrt{\lambda^2 + \kappa} \right\} \] where \(\gamma\) is the Cartan-Carathéodory geodesic with \(\gamma(0) = p\) and \(\dot\gamma(0) = v\), is a \(C^2\) sphere immersed in \(M\). Then they study various properties of \(S_\lambda(p)\). In particular, they prove that these submanifolds are second-order minimum points of the area functional under some volume constraint, and apply the obtained results to the isoperimetric problem in sub-Riemannian space forms.