Nonflatness of certain contact and CR manifolds (Q893240)

It is known that a contact form \(\eta\) on a manifold \(M^n\) does not admit flat associated metrics if \(n\geq 5\) [\textit{D. E. Blair}, Tohoku Math. J. (2) 28, 373--379 (1976; Zbl 0364.53013)], see also [\textit{Z. Olszak}, ibid. 31, 247--253 (1979; Zbl 0397.53026)]. On a Riemannian manifold \((M^n, g)\) with a contact subbundle \(D=\mathrm{Ker}(\eta)\) the Levi-Tanaka form \(L\) is the non-degenerate tensor \(\Gamma(D)^2\ni(X, Y)\to p[X,Y]\in\Gamma(TM/D)\), where \(p:TM\to TM/D\) denotes the canonical projection. A vector-bundle endomorphism \(\phi:D\to D\) is said to be \(D\)-parallel if the obvious extension to \(TM\) (given by \(\phi = 0\) on \(D^\perp\)) satisfies \(g((\nabla_X\phi)Y, Z)=0\) for all sections \(X\), \(Y\), \(Z\) of \(D\). This note proves the following: Let \((M^{2n+1},g)\) be a Riemannian manifold, \(n\geq 1\), and \(D< TM\) a subbundle of rank \(2n\). Suppose \(\phi:D\to D\) is a \(D\)-parallel endomorphism. If there exists a point \(x\in M\) such that: {\parindent=0.6cm \begin{itemize}\item[(a)] the sectional curvature of any two-plane \(\pi \subset D_x\) vanishes, \item[(b)] the Levi-Tanaka form of \(D\) is non-degenerate at \(x\), \item[(c)] \(\phi_x : D_x \to D_x\) has no real eigenvalues, \end{itemize}} then \(n \leq 2\). As an application, a large class of almost contact metric structures turns out to be non-flat. Furthermore, the author proves that compact flat Riemannian manifolds of odd dimension \(\geq 7\) cannot be immersed isometrically in simply connected, complete Kähler manifolds with nonpositive curvature as maximal CR submanifolds.