Magnetic curves on tangent sphere bundles (Q2317555)

Geodesics in the unit tangent sphere bundle over the sphere, and more generally over an arbitrary space form, were classified in previous works. Geodesics are special cases of magnetic curves, if the magnetic field is zero. In previous works, the present authors studied contact magnetic curves in Sasakian and in cosymplectic manifolds. Because the unit tangent sphere bundle of a Riemannian manifold admits a canonical contact metric structure, it is natural to study contact magnetic curves in the unit tangent sphere bundles. In the present work, the general theory is formulated and the magnetic equations for this situation are given. Special attention is paid to the situation when the base manifold is a space form. The examples with the base manifold \(M=S^2\) are given explicitly.