Bishop and Laplacian comparison theorems on Sasakian manifolds (Q1784353)

An almost contact metric manifold \(M\) is a \((2n+1)\)-dimensional manifold equipped with an almost contact structure \((J,\alpha_0,v_0)\) and a Riemannian metric \(\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle\) satisfying certain compatibility conditions. Sasakian manifolds are a special class of almost contact metric manifolds. The restriction of the metric \(\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle\) on the distribution \({\mathcal D}:=\text{ker}\alpha_0\) defines a sub-Riemannian structure. Let \(B_x(R)\) be the sub-Riemannian ball of radius \(R\) centered at \(x\) and let \(\eta \) be the Riemannian volume form of the metric \(\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle\). We denote by \(\eta_0(B_0(R))\) and \(\eta_H(B_H(R))\) the volume forms of sub-Riemannian balls of the Heisenberg group and the complex Hopf fibration respectively. The authors study the inequalities which satisfy the Tanaka-Webster curvature of the Sasakian manifold \(M\) to obtain the volume estimates \[ \eta(B_x(R))\leq \eta_0(B_0(R)), \quad \eta(B_x(R)) \leq \eta_H(B_H(R)) \] respectively. Let \(\Delta d= \sum_{i=1}^{2n} \left( \nabla _{v_i}\nabla d,v_i\right)\) be the sub-Laplacian, where \(v_1,\dots,v_{2n}\) is an orthonormal frame of \({\mathcal D}\), and \(d(x):=d(x_0,x)\) is the sub-Riemannian distance from a point \(x_0\) in \(M\). The authors study the inequalities which satisfy the Tanaka-Webster curvature of the Sasakian manifold \(M\) such that the sub-Laplacian \(\Delta d\) fulfills certain inequalities. The authors also prove a first conjugate time estimate under lower bounds of the Tanaka-Webster curvature. They discuss the Heisenberg group, the complex Hopf fibration, and their sub-Riemannian cut locus.