Generalized Bochner formulas and Ricci lower bounds for sub-Riemannian manifolds of rank two

TL;DR

This paper develops a framework for analyzing rank two sub-Riemannian manifolds, introducing a Ricci tensor analogue and Bochner formulas, enabling curvature bounds similar to Riemannian geometry.

Contribution

It constructs a canonical Ricci tensor and Bochner formulas for a new class of rank two sub-Riemannian manifolds, extending curvature bounds to these spaces.

Findings

Established a sub-Riemannian curvature dimension inequality.

Derived Bochner formulas for the sub-Laplacian.

Identified properties analogous to Riemannian Ricci curvature bounds.

Abstract

We study a new class of rank two sub-Riemannian manifolds encompassing Riemannian manifolds, CR manifolds with vanishing Webster-Tanaka torsion, orthonormal bundles over Riemannian manifolds, and graded nilpotent Lie groups of step two. These manifolds admit a canonical horizontal connection and a canonical sub-Laplacian. We construct on these manifolds an analogue of the Riemannian Ricci tensor and prove Bochner type formulas for the sub-Laplacian. As a consequence, it is possible to formulate on these spaces a sub-Riemannian analogue of the so-called curvature dimension inequality. Sub-Riemannian manifolds for which this inequality is satisfied are shown to share many properties in common with Riemannian manifolds whose Ricci curvature is bounded from below