Jacobi osculating rank and isotropic geodesics on naturally reductive 3-manifolds (Q838017)

From the well-known classification of simply connected naturally reductive homogeneous spaces of dimension 3, one can see that any such space is a principal fiber bundle \(M^3(\kappa,\tau)\) over a complete simply connected surface of constant curvature \(\kappa\), with the horizontal distribution of this fibration being the kernel of a connection form with constant curvature which can be taken positive and \(\not=\sqrt{\kappa}\). The fibers are geodesics and there exists a one-parameter family of translations along the fibers, generated by a unit Killing vector field called the Hopf vector field. The author proves that the Jacobi osculating rank of every geodesic in \(M^3(\kappa,\tau)\) is two except for the Hopf fibers, where it is zero. He also determines all isotropic geodesics and the isotropic tangent conjugate locus.