Symmetric parabolic contact geometries and symmetric spaces (Q367148)

In this beautiful paper the authors investigate symmetric parabolic contact geometries; the paper is part of a research project by the authors. Let us recall that a parabolic contact geometry is a Cartan geometry \((\mathcal{G}\rightarrow M, \omega)\) of type \((G,P)\) such that \(G\) is a simple Lie group and \(P\) a certain parabolic subgroup. Symmetric parabolic contact geometries are analogues of symmetric spaces in the category of contact geometries. They are defined as contact geometries admitting for each point \(x\) an involutive symmetry \(s_x\) centered at \(x\). The authors establish that symmetric parabolic contact geometries are homogeneous (Proposition 5). They show as their main result that symmetric contact geometries can be described as fibre bundles over certain symmetric spaces (Theorem 17). In Section 4 the authors describe in great detail a collection of examples of symmetric parabolic contact geometries. This nice and clearly written section may be studied by a non-expert as a basic introduction to the topic.