Sub-Riemannian geodesics on the 3-D sphere

Der-Chen Chang, Irina Markina, Alexander Vasil'ev

Published 2008-04-10, updated 2008-06-03Version 2

The unit sphere $\mathbb S^3$ can be identified with the unitary group SU(2). Under this identification the unit sphere can be considered as a non-commutative Lie group. The commutation relations for the vector fields of the corresponding Lie algebra define a 2-step sub-Riemannian manifold. We study sub-Riemannian geodesics on this sub-Riemannian manifold making use of the Hamiltonian formalism and solving the corresponding Hamiltonian system.