Reducibility in Sasakian Geometry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study reducibility properties in Sasakian geometry. First we give the Sasaki version of the de Rham Decomposition Theorem; however, we need a mild technical assumption on the Sasaki automorphism group which includes the toric case. Next we introduce the concept of {\it cone reducible} and consider $S^3$ bundles over a smooth projective algebraic variety where we give a classification result concerning contact structures admitting the action of a 2-torus of Reeb type. In particular, we can classify all such Sasakian structures up to contact isotopy on $S^3$ bundles over a Riemann surface of genus greater than zero. Finally, we show that in the toric case an extremal Sasaki metric on a Sasaki join always splits.

58 pages, minor corrections made in latest version; a reference added and references updated; to appear in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society