Ricci curvature type lower bounds for sub-Riemannian structures on Sasakian manifolds. (Q2515681)

There are many efforts to generalize the notion of Ricci curvature lower bounds in Riemannian geometry and its consequences to more general metric measure spaces. In the present paper, the authors do this for Sasakian manifolds with sub-Riemannian metrics. More precisely, they establish sufficient conditions for a Sasakian manifold equipped with a natural sub-Riemannian distance to satisfy these properties. These conditions are defined by the Tanaka-Webster curvature associated with the given geometric structure, analyzing the intrinsic Jacobi equations along sub-Riemannian extremals. The results obtained generalize the earlier works by \textit{A. Agrachev} and \textit{P. W. Y. Lee} [Math. Ann. 360, No. 1--2, 209--253 (2014; Zbl 1327.53032)] for three dimensional case and by \textit{N. Juillet} [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2009, No. 13, 2347--2373 (2009; Zbl 1176.53053)] for the Heisenberg group.