Integrable sub-Riemannian geodesic flows on the special orthogonal group

Abstract

We analyse the geometry of the rubber-rolling distribution on the special orthogonal group and show that almost all the normal geodesics of any right-invariant sub-Riemannian metric defined on this distribution are completely integrable. Our argument is an adaptation of the method used to establish integrability of the Riemannian metric arising from the $n$-dimensional rigid body: namely, by exhibiting a Lax pair and bi-Hamiltonian structure for the reduced equations of motion.