Regularity results for sub-Riemannian geodesics (Q2636876)

In the present paper, the author studies length minimality of abnormal curves in rank 2 sub-Riemannian manifolds of polynomial type. In a preliminary step, he classifies the structure of the singularities of abnormal extremals. In a second step, he studies an abnormal curve near a singular point, considering as an working hypothesis that length minimality for an abnormal curve is lost when approaching its singularity locus. Thus, the author proves that this is actually the case when the singularity at some point is of the type \(C^{1,\alpha}\), with \(\alpha>0\) small enough, which is the difficult part of the program. The paper ends with one example of such results which treats the case of Carnot groups (see Theorem 10.1, Section 10).