Engel structures and weakly hyperbolic flows on four-manifolds (Q1989593)

An {Engel structure} on a \(4\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) is a smooth rank-\(2\) distribution \(\mathcal{D}\) with the property that \([\mathcal{D}\),\( \mathcal{D]}\) is an even contact structure \(\mathcal{E}\) (i.e., a maximally non-integrable smooth hyperplane field \(\mathcal{E}\)). A { bi-Engel structure} on a \(4\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) is a pair of Engel structures \((\mathcal{D}_{+}\),\(\mathcal{D}_{-}\mathcal{)}\) inducing the same even contact structure \(\mathcal{E}\), defining opposite orientations for \(\mathcal{E}\) and having a one-dimensional intersection. In the paper under review, the authors study bi-Engel structures. The main result of the paper gives the correspondence between bi-Engel structures and a class of weakly hyperbolic flows.