Canonical foliations of certain classes of almost contact metric structures (Q2581213)

Let \((\varphi,\xi, \eta, g)\) be an almost contact metric structure on a \((2n+1)\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) and denote by \(\phi\) the corresponding Kähler 2-form \(\phi\). The manifold \(M\) equipped with this structure is said to be \(\alpha\)-cosymplectic, \(\alpha\) being a real number, if \(d \eta = 0, d \phi = 2 \alpha \eta \wedge \phi\). This class of manifolds contains two interesting subclasses, namely for \(\alpha = 0\), \(M\) is almost cosymplectic and for \(\alpha \neq 0\), \(M\) is almost \(\alpha\)-Kenmotsu. The following two cases provide well-known examples: Let \(N\) be an almost Kähler manifold. Then the product \(N \times \mathbb R\) is almost cosymplectic. The warped product \(N \times_f \mathbb R\) with \(f(s) = ce^s\), \(c\) being a nonzero constant, provides an almost \(\alpha\)-Kenmotsu manifold after a homothetic change of the almost Kenmotsu structure (for \(\alpha = 1\)). Since \(d \eta = 0\), the contact distribution \(D_i = \text{ker}\, \eta\) defines a (canonical) foliation \(f\) of codimension \(1\) on \(M\). This foliation, together with the orthogonal complementary foliation \(f^\perp\) generated by \(\xi\), have already been investigated for the two subclasses mentioned above. The main purpose of this paper is to extend this study to the general case in a unifying way. This is done by using the basic formulas contained, for example, in fundamental work of Z. Olszak. Here the operator \(h = - \frac 12 \varphi {\mathcal L}_\xi \varphi\), defined on \(M\) by means of the Lie derivative \({\mathcal L}\), plays an important role.