1. Introduction
It is well known that the product
of a
-dimensional almost contact metric manifold
(cf. Reference [
1]) has an almost complex structure
J, which with product metric
makes
an almost Hermitian manifold. The geometry of the almost contact metric manifold
depends on the geometry of the almost Hermitian manifold
and gives several structures on
M like a Sasakian structure, a quasi-Sasakian structure, and others (cf. References [
1,
2,
3]). There are sixteen different types of structures on the almost Hermitian manifold
(cf. Reference [
4]), and the structure in the class
on
gives a structure
on
M known as trans-Sasakian structure (cf. Reference [
5]), which generalizes a Sasakian structure, a Kenmotsu structure, and a cosymplectic structure on a contact metric manifold (cf. References [
2,
3]), where
are smooth functions defined on
M. Here, the class
should not be confused with Stiefel–Whitney characteristic class, but it is one of the sixteen classes specified by different combinations of covariant derivatives of the almost complex structure
J on the almost Hermitian manifold.
A trans-Sasakian manifold
is called a trans-Sasakian manifold of type
and trans-Sasakian manifolds of type
,
and
are called cosymplectic,
-Sasakian and
-Kenmotsu manifolds, respectively. In Reference [
6], Marrero proved that a trans-Sasakian manifold of dimension greater than or equal to five is either a cosymplectic manifold, a
-Sasakian manifold, or a
-Kenmotsu manifold; therefore, after this result, there is an emphasis in studying geometry of 3-dimensional trans-Sasakian manifolds. We shall abbreviate a 3-dimensional trans-Sasakian manifold
by a TRS-manifold.
An interesting question is to seek conditions under which a closed (compact without boundary) TRS-manifold is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. The geometry of TRS-manifold is important because of Thurston’s conjecture (cf. Reference [
7]), now known as Geometrization-Conjecture, which gave eight geometries on a 3-dimensional manifold, namely Spherical geometry
, Euclidean geometry
, Hyperbolic geometry
, the geometry of
, the geometry of
, the geometry of universal cover of
, the Nil geometry, and the Sol geometry (for details on this topic, see Reference [
8]). In addition, we know that 3-dimensional Sasakian manifolds are in abundance, for example, the unit sphere
, the Euclidean space
, the unit tangent bundle
of the sphere
, the special unitary group
, the Heisenberg group
, and the special linear group
(cf. Reference [
9]). Thus, the geometry of TRS-manifolds, in matching them with Thurston’s eight geometries on 3-dimensional closed Riemannian manifolds, becomes more interesting, and, as we see, many in the list of Thurston’s geometries are included in the list of Sasakian manifolds.
In References [
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19], the authors studied compact TRS-manifolds with some restrictions on the smooth functions
and the vector field
appearing in their definition for getting conditions under which a TRS-manifold is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. It is known that a compact simply connected TRS-manifold satisfying Poisson equations
,
, respectively, gives a necessary and sufficient condition for it to be homothetic to a Sasakian manifold (cf. Reference [
13]).
In addition, in References [
19,
20,
21], interesting results on the geometry of TRS-manifolds are obtained, where the authors (W. Wang, X. Liu, Y. Wang, Y. Zhao) considered other aspects in Thurston’s eight geometries. In Reference [
13], a question was asked whether the function
on a compact TRS-manifold satisfying the differential equation
necessitates the TRS-manifold to be homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. It is shown that this question has negative answer (cf. Reference [
21]). However, with additional restrictions, such as positivity of sectional curvatures, and certain differential inequality satisfied by the function,
gives an affirmative answer to this question (cf. Theorem 3.5, [
15]).
Owing to Thurston’s geometrization conjecture, geometry of TRS-manifolds (being 3-dimensional Riemannian manifolds) have become an important subject. Moreover, Sasakian geometry picks up many important geometries in Thurston’s eight geometries; hence, the question of finding conditions under which a TRS-manifold is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold has considerable importance. In
Section 3 of this paper, the first four results deal with finding necessary and sufficient conditions on a compact connected TRS-manifold
to be homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold, and the fifth deals with finding necessary and sufficient conditions on a connected TRS-manifold
to be homothetic to a connected Sasakian manifold.
In the first result, we consider a compact connected TRS-manifold of constant scalar curvature satisfying the inequality and the Ricci operator T satisfying , and we give necessary and sufficient conditions for M to be homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold (see Theorem 2). In the second result, we show that a compact and connected TRS-manifold with Ricci curvature a non-zero constant and satisfying give necessary and sufficient conditions for M to be homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold (see Theorem 3). Similarly, in the third result, we show that conditions and on a compact and connected TRS-manifold are necessary and sufficient for M to be homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold (see Theorem 4). In addition, the fourth result deals with conditions for a point and on a compact and connected TRS-manifold to reach a similar conclusion (see Theorem 5). Finally, in the fifth result, we show that compactness could be dropped with the conditions for a point and on a connected TRS-manifold to reach a similar conclusion (see Theorem 6).
Among Sasakian manifolds, Einstein Sasakian manifolds play an important role because of their elegant geometry, as well as their important applications in theoretical physics (see the excellent monograph in Reference [
9]). In the last section of this paper, we find necessary and sufficient conditions on a compact and simply connected TRS-manifold
to be homothetic to a compact simply connected Einstein Sasakian manifold (see Theorem 7).
2. Preliminaries
Let
be a 3-dimensional almost contact metric manifold, where
F is a
-tensor field,
a unit vector field, and
u a smooth 1-form dual to
with respect to the Riemannian metric
g, satisfying
, where
is the Lie algebra of smooth vector fields on
M (cf. Reference [
1]). If there are smooth functions
on an almost contact metric manifold
satisfying
then
is said to be a trans-Sasakian manifold, where
,
, and
∇ is the Levi-Civita connection with respect to the metric
g (cf. References [
7,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
20]). We shall abbreviate the 3-dimensional trans-Sasakian manifold
by TRS-manifold. Using Equations (
1) and (
2), we get
Let
S be the Ricci tensor of a Riemannian manifold
. Then, the Ricci operator
T is defined by
,
. On a TRS-manifold, we have the following:
Note that Equation (
3) implies
and, using this equation, together with Equation (
4), we have
Thus, on a compact TRS-manifold, using Equation (
6) and the above equation, we have
Now, we state the following result of Okumura.
Theorem 1 (Reference [
18]).
Let be a Riemannian manifold. If M admits a Killing vector field of constant length satisfyingfor non-zero constant α and any vector fields U and V, then M is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. Given two Riemannian manifolds
, a diffeomorphism
is said to be a conformal transformation if the pullback
of the metric
satisfies
where
is a smooth function on
. If the function
is a constant, then the diffeomorphism
f is said to be a homothety, and, in this situation, the Riemannian manifold
is said to be homothetic to the Riemannian manifold
. Thus, Theorem 1 gives a condition under which a Riemannian manifold
is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold.
For a smooth function
f on a Riemannian manifold
, the Hessian operator
of
f is defined by
and the Laplace operator
is defined by
, and it satisfies
3. TRS-Manifolds Homothetic to Sasakian Manifolds
In this section, we find necessary and sufficient conditions on a TRS-manifold to be homothetic to a Sasakian manifold.
Theorem 2. A compact and connected TRS-manifold with constant scalar curvature satisfyingis homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold of constant scalar curvature if and only if the Ricci operator T satisfies Proof. Suppose
holds, then, using Equation (
5), we have
Taking the inner product in the above equation with
, we get
Using Equation (
6), we have
, and, by (
8), we have
Integrating the above equation, we conclude
Using the inequality in the statement, we get
Since,
is a constant, we get
M is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold of constant scalar curvature (cf. Theorem 3.1, in Reference [
14]). The converse is trivial. □
Theorem 3. A compact and connected TRS-manifold with Ricci curvature a non-zero constant is homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold if and only if Proof. Using Equation (
5), we have
Now, using
in the above equation, we get
Integrating the above equation, we have
Using condition in the statement, we conclude
Combining Equations (
9) and (
10), we arrive at
, i.e.,
or
. Thus, using Equation (
6), we have
Integrating the above equation, we conclude that
. Consequently, Equation (
9) implies
, and, as the Ricci curvature
is non-zero constant, we conclude
is a non-zero constant. The Equation (
3) now takes the form
and we get
i.e., the unit vector field
is Killing. Moreover, using Equation (
11), we get
where
is a non-zero constant. Hence, by Theorem 1, we conclude that
M is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. The converse is trivial as for a Sasakian manifold
. □
Theorem 4. A compact and connected TRS-manifold with the Ricci curvature is homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold, if and only if, .
Proof. Suppose
. Then, we have
and
where
is a local orthonormal frame on
M, and
is the Hessian operator of
. Using
and Equations (
2) and (
4), we get
Thus, we have
, i.e.,
Integrating by parts the above equation gives
The above integral implies
i.e.,
, and it gives
is a constant. Now, using Equation (
7), we conclude
. Then, we have
, and, operating
F on this equation while using Equation (
1), we get
In order to accomplish the result, we intend to use Theorem 3 by showing that
. However,
in Equation (
4) implies
; therefore, the above equation implies
is a constant. Moreover, using Equation (
5), we get
, and, using the condition in the statement, we get
is a non-zero constant. Thus, as in Theorem 3, we conclude that
M is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. The converse is trivial. □
Theorem 5. A compact and connected TRS-manifold with for a point , is homothetic to a compact and connected Sasakian manifold, if and only if, .
Proof. Suppose
holds. Then, we have
and, inserting above equation in Equation (
5), we arrive at
In addition, using similar steps as in Theorem 4, we compute
. Thus, we have
, i.e.,
. Integrating this equation, we get
Now, we observe that
and, using Equations (
4) and (
6) in the above equation, we get
and, by Equation (
12), we conclude
which implies
. Hence,
is a constant, which through the condition in the statement implies
is a non-zero constant. Moreover, we have
, and, in view of Equation (
4), we have
. Thus, as in Theorem 3, we conclude that
M is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold. The converse is trivial. □
We observe that Equation (
4) implies
, and, with
being a unit vector field, it implies
. Naturally, one feels prompted to ask what happens in case of the equality. Interestingly, the answer is the TRS-manifold which, in this case, is homothetic to a Sasakian manifold without imposition of compactness, as seen in the following result.
Theorem 6. A connected TRS-manifold with for a point is homothetic to a connected Sasakian manifold, if and only if, .
Proof. Suppose that
holds. Then, using Equation (
4), we have
i.e.,
Taking covariant derivative in the above equation with respect to
and using Equation (
3), we arrive at
Now, using symmetry of the operator
, the above equation implies
and
in the above equation yields
i.e.,
Using Equations (
4) and (
13) in the above equation, we arrive at
Note that, as in the statement
and, accordingly, on connected
M, the above equation implies
Using Equation (
14), we get
The above equation, together with Equations (
4), (
13), (
15), and (
16) in the above equation, we conclude
i.e.,
. Since
, we get
. Thus, Equation (
13) implies
is a non-zero constant, and, using Equations (
2) and (
3), we get
and this proves
M is homothetic to a connected Sasakian manifold (see Theorem 1). The converse is trivial. □