The geometry of marked contact Engel structures (Q2050596)

The article under review is concerned with marked contact Engel structures. A contact Engel structures is a special triple \((\mathcal M^5, \mathcal C, \gamma)\), where \((\mathcal M^5, \mathcal C)\) is a 5-dimensional contact manifold with the contact structure \(\mathcal C\), a hyperplane field on \(\mathcal M^5\), and \(\gamma\) is a sub-bundle of \(\mathbb P(\mathcal C)\), the projectivization of \(\mathcal C\), such that each fiber \(\gamma_x\) is the image of the twisted cubic curve \([t,s] \to [t^3, t^2s, ts^2, s^3]\), that satisfies the condition that locally over an open subset \(\mathcal U \subset \mathcal M^5\) it is equivalent to Engel's description of the \(G_2\)-invariant structure, i.e., the Lie algebra of the simple Lie algebra \(\mathfrak g_2\) realized as infinitesimal automorphisms of the differential geometric structure on \(\mathcal M^5\) (see [\textit{Fr. Engel}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris 116, 786--788 (1893; JFM 25.0631.01)]). A marked contact Engel structure is a contact Engel structure together with a section \(\sigma: \mathcal U \to \gamma\) that marks a point in each twisted cubic \(\gamma_x\). This can be viewed as an analogue of the conformally flat null congruence structure in Lorentzian geometry. For marked contact Engel structures, one of the main results in this article gives a classification, up to local equivalence, of all homogeneous models with symmetry groups of dimension not less than \(6\). For instance, at dimension 8, there are precisely two such structures with the infinitesimal symmetric algebras isomorphic to \({\mathfrak{sl}(3, \mathbb R)}\) and \({\mathfrak{sl}(1,2)}\). For a complete list, see Table 1 in this article. This result is deduced by applying various invariant conditions for marked contact Engel structures obtained from Cartan's equivalence method (see Chapter 10 in [\textit{P. J. Olver}, Equivalence, invariants, and symmetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1995; Zbl 0837.58001)]). Here, being invariant means that it is independent of the coframe that is used to locally describe (the equivalence between) marked contact Engel structures. Another main result in this article comes from the discussion of the integrability of a marked contact Engel structure. It is given, as a constraint, by a differential equation (see Proposition 2 in this article). Similar to the classical general relativity, finding an exact solution of such an equation is usually called the Kerr Theorem (see for instance [\textit{J. Tafel}, Lett. Math. Phys. 10, 33--39 (1985; Zbl 0584.53032)]), and the second main result in this article provides an analogue Kerr Theorem in this set-up. This can also be understood in terms of a twistorial correspondence that gives a geometric description of the maximally symmetrical marked contact Engel structures.