On prolongations of contact manifolds (Q2845473)

The authors contradict a result which states that every Engel structure on \(M \times\mathbb S^1\) (\(M\) a 3-manifold) with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers is determined up to isotopies ``preserving the tangentness of the line fields'', by the contact structure induced on a cross section and the twisting of the Engel structure on the fibers. The authors provide a counter example showing isotopies through Engel structures with characteristic foliations tangent to \(\mathbb S^1\) fibers yield non-equivalent Engel structures with same contact structures and twisting numbers. They show that the characterisation also depends on certain \(\operatorname{mod}\)-\(n\) classes of the first cohomology of the base manifold \(M\). The characterisation theorem depends on constructing a cohomology exact sequence. The cohomology sequence is constructed by spectral sequence technique.NEWLINENEWLINE The paper concludes with a theorem which states that every contact 3-manifold admits both 2-fold prolongations and 4-fold prolongations.