H-type foliations

Abstract

With a view toward sub-Riemannian geometry, we introduce and study H-type foliations. These structures are natural generalizations of K-contact geometries which encompass as special cases K-contact manifolds, twistor spaces, 3K-contact manifolds and H-type groups. Under an horizontal Ricci curvature lower bound on these structures, we prove a sub-Riemannian diameter upper bounds and first eigenvalue estimates for the sub-Laplacian. Then, using a result by Moroianu-Semmelmann [38], we classify the H-type foliations that carry a parallel horizontal Clifford structure. Finally, we prove an horizontal Einstein property and compute the horizontal Ricci curvature of these spaces in codimension more than 2.