Sub-Riemannian geodesics on the 3-D sphere

Abstract

The unit sphere ${\mathbb{S}}^3$ can be identified with the unitary group SU(2). Under this identification the unit sphere can be considered as a non-commutative Lie group. The commutation relations for the vector fields of the corresponding Lie algebra define a 2-step sub-Riemannian manifold. We study sub-Riemannian geodesics on this sub-Riemannian manifold making use of the Hamiltonian formalism and solving the corresponding Hamiltonian system.

13 pages, 1 figure

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Modified action and differential operators on the 3-D sub-Riemannian sphere