Contact pairs (Q2571475)

The authors introduce a new geometric structure on a differentiable manifold \(M\) called contact pair. A contact pair of type (\(h,k\)) on a (\(2h+2k+2\))-dimensional manifold \(M\) is a pair of Pfaffian forms (\( \alpha ,\eta \)) satisfying the properties: \(d\alpha ^{h+1}=0\), \(d\eta ^{k+1}=0\) and \(\alpha \wedge d\alpha ^{h}\wedge \eta \wedge d\eta ^{k}\) is a volume form on \(M\). The forms \(\alpha ,\eta \) have constant classes \(2h+1\) and \(2k+1\), respectively, whose characteristic foliations are transverse and complementary and such that \(\alpha\) and \(\eta \) restrict to contact forms on the leaves of the characteristic foliations of \(\eta \) and \(\alpha\), respectively. Further differential objects are associated to contact pairs: two commuting Reeb vector fields, Legendrian curves on \(M\) and two Lie brackets on the set of differentiable functions on \(M\).