G₂ and the rolling distribution

DOI10.5169/SEALS-110100zbMATH Open1251.70008arXivmath/0612469MaRDI QIDQ2272256FDOQ2272256

Authors: Gil Bor, Richard Montgomery 

Publication date: 10 August 2009

Published in: L'Enseignement Mathématique. 2e Série (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Associated to the problem of rolling one surface along another there is a five-manifold M with a rank two distribution. If the two surfaces are spheres then M is the product of the rotation group SO_3 with the two-sphere and its distribution enjoys an obvious symmetry group; the product of two SO_3's, one for each sphere. But if the ratio of radii of the spheres is 1:3 and if the distribution is lifted to the universal cover S^3 imes S^2 of M, then the symmetry group becomes much larger: the split real form of the Lie group G_2. This fact goes back to Cartan in a sense, and can be found in a paper by Bryant and Hsu. We prove this fact through two explicit constructions, relying on the theory of roots and weights for the Lie algebra of G_2, and on its 7-dimensional representation.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0612469

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zbMATH Keywords

Lie groups

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Nonholonomic systems related to the dynamics of a system of particles (70F25) Nonholonomic dynamical systems (37J60) Motion of a rigid body in contact with a solid surface (70E18)

Cited In (27)

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• The dancing metric, ${G}_2$-symmetry and projective rolling
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• Free nilpotent Lie algebras admitting ad-invariant metrics
• Local equivalence of some maximally symmetric rolling distributions and \(SU(2)\) Pfaffian systems
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• Embedding algorithms and applications to differential equations
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• Rubber rolling over a sphere
• Geometric conditions for the existence of a rolling without twisting or slipping
• The geometry of almost Einstein \((2,3,5)\) distributions
• Analytic torsion of generic rank two distributions in dimension five
• Homogeneous real \((2,3,5)\) distributions with isotropy

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