Jacobi fields in nonholonomic mechanics

In this paper, we define Jacobi fields for nonholonomic mechanics using a similar characterization than in Riemannian geometry. We give explicit conditions to find Jacobi fields and finally we find the nonholonomic Jacobi fields in two equivalent ways: the first one, using an appropriate complete lift of the nonholonomic system and, in the second one, using the curvature and torsion of the associated nonholonomic connection.

Cartan meets Chaplygin

In a note at the 1928 International Congress of Mathematicians Cartan outlined how his ?method of equivalence? can provide the invariants of nonholonomic systems on a manifold ?? with kinetic lagrangians [29]. Cartan indicated which changes of the metric outside the constraint distribution ?? ? ???? preserve the nonholonomic connection ?????? = Proj?? ?????, ??,?? ? ??, where ????? is the Levi-Civita connection on ?? and Proj?? is the orthogonal projection over ??. Here we discuss this equivalence problem of nonholonomic connections for Chaplygin systems [30,31,62]. We also discuss an example-a mathematical gem!-found by Oliva and Terra [76]. It implies that there is more freedom (thus more opportunities) using a weaker equivalence, just to preserve the straightest paths: ?????? = 0. However, finding examples that are weakly but not strongly equivalent leads to an over-determined system of equations indicating that such systems should be rare. We show that the two notions coincide in the following cases: i) Rank two distributions. This implies for instance that in Cartan?s example of a sphere rolling on a plane without slipping or twisting, a (2,3,5) distribution, the two notions of equivalence coincide; ii) For a rank 3 or higher distribution, the corank of D in D+[D,D] must be at least 3 in order to find examples where the two notions of equivalence do not coincide. This rules out the possibility of finding examples on (3,5) distributions such as Chaplygin?s marble sphere. Therefore the beautiful (3,6) example by Oliva and Terra is minimal. 1.

On some sub-Riemannian objects in hypersurfaces of sub-Riemannian manifolds

We study some sub-Riemannian objects (such as horizontal connectivity, horizontal connection, horizontal tangent plane, horizontal mean curvature) in hypersurfaces of sub-Riemannian manifolds. We prove that if a connected hypersurface in a contact manifold of dimension more than three is noncharacteristic or with isolated characteristic points, then there exists at least a piecewise smooth horizontal curve in this hypersurface connecting any two given points in it. In any sub-Riemannian manifold, we obtain the sub-Riemannian version of the fundamental theorem of Riemannian geometry: there exists a unique nonholonomic connection which is completely determined by the sub-Riemannian structure and is “symmetric” and compatible with the sub-Riemannian metric. We use this nonholonomic connection to study horizontal mean curvature of hypersurfaces.