Conformal great circle flows on the three-sphere

Abstract

We consider a closed orientable Riemannian 3-manifold $(M,g)$ and a vector field $X$ with unit norm whose integral curves are geodesics of $g$. Any such vector field determines naturally a 2-plane bundle contained in the kernel of the contact form of the geodesic flow of $g$. We study when this 2-plane bundle remains invariant under two natural almost complex structures. We also provide a geometric condition that ensures that $X$ is the Reeb vector field of the 1-form $λ$ obtained by contracting $g$ with $X$. We apply these results to the case of great circle flows on the 3-sphere with two objectives in mind: one is to recover the result in \cite{GG} that a volume preserving great circle flow must be Hopf and the other is to characterize in a similar fashion great circle flows that are conformal relative to the almost complex structure in the kernel of $λ$ given by rotation by $π/2$ according to the orientation of $M$.

10 pages, final version to appear in Proceedings of the AMS