Contact structure with basic potentials (Q2575514)

A contact structure on a manifold \(M\) of odd dimension \(2n+1\) is a 1-form \(\eta\) such that \(\eta \wedge d\eta ^n\) is a volume form. We recall that, in such a case, there exists a unique vector field \(\xi\), called the characteristic (Reeb) vector field, characterized by \(i_\xi \eta=1\) and \(i_\xi d\eta=0\). In this paper the authors study contact manifolds where \(\omega=d\eta\) admits a basic potential, that is, a 1-form \(\beta\) such that \(\omega =d\beta\), \(i_\xi \beta = {\mathcal L}_\xi \beta =0\). They show that there exists a foliation of codimension 1 on \(M\) given by \(\text{Ker } (\eta -\beta )\) and study its relation with \(\xi\).