A codimension 3 sub-Riemannian structure on the Gromoll-Meyer exotic sphere (Q2399776)

In this paper, the authors study the Gromoll-Meyer exotic 7-sphere \(\Sigma^7_{GM}\) constructed in [\textit{D. Gromoll} and \textit{W. Meyer}, Ann. Math. (2) 100, 401--406 (1974; Zbl 0293.53015)]. The main result of the paper is to construct a sub-Riemannian structure on \(\Sigma^7_{GM}\), i.e., a sub-bundle of the tangent bundle, which has codimension three. This structure is completely non-holonomic, or in other words, bracket-generating, of step two. (Bracket-generating is the usual non-degeneracy condition studied in sub-Riemannian geometry.) They also show how their method produces an analogous sub-Riemannian structure on the standard 7-sphere \(S^7\), thus giving a new proof of a result previously shown in [\textit{M. Godoy Molina} and \textit{I. Markina}, Rev. Mat. Iberoam. 27, No. 3, 997-1022 (2011; Zbl 1228.53043)].