Space time manifolds and contact structures
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Space time manifolds and contact structures
zbMATH Open document ID: 0715.53032
DOI: 10.1155/S0161171290000783
published in: International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
publication date: 1990-01-01T00:00:00Z
full work available at URL: https://eudml.org/doc/46548
review text: This paper is an attempt to relate the theory of contact manifolds of Lorentzian geometry, and ultimately, to general relativity. The definitions of an almost contact manifold, contact manifold, and regular contact manifold are extended to the case of a semi-Riemannian manifold. A contact spacetime is defined to be a contact manifold with a semi- Riemannian metric of Lorentzian signature. The author shows that any odd dimensional strongly causal spacetime carries a regular contact structure. The Gödel universe is shown to be an example of a non- regular contact spacetime. A brief discussion of contact CR submanifolds in the context of semi-Riemannian manifolds is given. The idea here is that a 4-dimensional spacetime might be a contact CR submanifold of an ambient (necessarily odd-dimensional) contact manifold. References 15-27 were omitted from publication.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 53C15
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 53C50
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 83C99
zbMATH DE Number: 4178049
zbMATH Keywords: contact manifolds
zbMATH Keywords: Lorentzian geometry
zbMATH Keywords: general relativity
zbMATH Keywords: contact spacetime
zbMATH Keywords: strongly causal
zbMATH Keywords: contact CR submanifolds
author: Krishan Lal Duggal
reviewed by: Dean E. Allison
MaRDI profile type: Publication
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4178049