Chern classes of integral submanifolds of some contact manifolds (Q1854165)

A complex subbundle of the normal bundle to an integral submanifold of the contact distribution in a Sasakian manifold is given. The geometry of this subbundle is investigated and some results concerning its Chern classes are obtained. More precisely, the author considers a \((2m+1)\)-dimensional manifold \(\widetilde M\) endowed with an almost contact metric structure \((F,\xi, \eta,g)\) and assumes that \(\widetilde M\) is Sasakian. Then, for an integral \(n\)-dimensional submanifold of \(\widetilde M\), the author considers the following orthogonal decomposition of the normal space \(T_x^\perp M\) at each point \(x\in M\): \[ T_x^\perp M=F(T_xM) \oplus\tau_x (M)\oplus \text{span} \{\xi_x\}, \] where \(\tau_x(M)\) is the \(2(m-n)\)-dimensional subspace of \(T_xM\) orthogonal to \(F(T_xM)\oplus \text{span} \{\xi_k\}\). Then \(\tau(M)= \bigcup_{x \in M}\tau_x (M)\) is the total space of a subbundle \(\tau(M)\) of \(T^\perp M\). This bundle is called the maximal invariant normal bundle of the integral submanifold \(M\). At first, the author proves that \(\tau(M)\) has a natural structure of a complex symplectic vector bundle. Then the Chern classes \([\gamma_k (\tau)]\) of \(\tau(M)\) are considered and the Chern form \(\gamma_k (\tau)\) is called the \(k\)th normal Chern form of the submanifold \(M\). Finally, by applying some techniques used by \textit{B.-Y. Chen} and \textit{J.-M. Morvan} [J. Geom. Phys. 13, No. 1, 79-104 (1994; Zbl 0788.53051); C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I 308, No. 9, 269-272 (1989; Zbl 0679.57010)] in the study of submanifolds of a Kähler manifold and \textit{I. Vaisman}'s result concerning the characteristic classes of quaternionic bundles [Isr. J. Math. 69, No. 1, 46-58 (1990; Zbl 0713.57015)], the author obtains stronger results than for isotropic submanifolds. Namely, it is proved that if \(m-n\) is even, then all odd Chern classes of \(\tau(M)\) are zero. More generally, it is shown that the first Chern class of \(\tau(M)\) is zero when \(\widetilde M\) is a Sasakian space form.