On some sub-Riemannian objects in hypersurfaces of sub-Riemannian manifolds (Q3158792)

The following theorem is the main result of the paper: Consider an orientable contact manifold with Riemannian metric and a smooth connected hypersurface \(S\). If the set of characteristic points in \(S\) with respect to the contact distribution does not contain any immersed submanifold, then for any points of \(S\) there exists a piecewise horizontal curve connecting them. This result guarantees that the Carnot-Carathéodory metric induced by the horizontal distribution is well defined. Moreover the authors give the construction of an intrinsic non-holomorphic connection, i.e. a connection completely determined by the sub-Riemannian structure on \(S\). This is the sub-Riemannian version of the fundamental fact of Riemannian geometry. In particular, this connection is used to study horizontal mean curvature.