The contact Yamabe flow on \(K\)-contact manifolds (Q1043023)

The contact Yamabe problem is an analog in contact geometry of the Yamabe problem for Riemannian manifolds and of the CR Yamabe problem on CR manifolds. Recall that a contact metric manifold endowed with a contact form \(\theta\) is called a \(K\)-contact manifold when the Reeb vector field \(\xi\) is a Killing vector field. The contact Yamabe problem consists in finding on a given contact metric manifold \((M, \theta_0, g_0, J_0)\) a contact form in the conformal class of \(\theta_0\) whose Webster scalar curvature is a constant. One defines the contact Yamabe functional by \[ Y(\theta) = {{\int_M W_\theta\, d\mu}\over {\left(\int_M \, d\mu\right)^{n/(n+1)}}}\,, \] where \(W_\theta\) is the Webster scalar curvature of the contact form \(\theta\) and \(d\mu = \theta \wedge (d\theta)^n\) is the natural volume form. In the present paper, the author uses the contact Yamabe flow, defined by \[ {{\partial \theta}\over{\partial t} }= (w - W)\theta, \] (where \(w\) is the average of the Webster scalar curvature) to solve this contact Yamabe problem on \(K\)-contact manifolds. The main result (Theorem 1.1) states that if \((M, \theta_0, J_0, g_0, \xi_0)\) is a \(K\)-contact manifold, then the contact Yamabe flow exists for all time and converges to a contact form \(\theta_\infty \in [\theta_0]\) with constant Webster scalar curvature. In particular, along the contact Yamabe flow, the conformal factor of \(\theta (t)\) is basic with respect to \((M, \theta_0, \xi_0)\). Moreover the set of solutions of the contact Yamabe problem on \((M, \theta_0, J_0, g_0)\) with \(\xi_0u = 0\) and fixed volume is compact.