1. Introduction
It is well known that in Riemannian geometry the study of geodesics on manifolds plays an essential role. Hence, it is quite obvious that a family of curves defined on a Riemannian manifold with respect to its geometric structure will reveal more information on the geometry of the manifold from the point of view of these curves’ properties. A natural generalization of the geodesics is the magnetic curves. In a physical interpretation, the trajectory of a charged particle moving in a magnetic background under the influence of the magnetic field F is called a magnetic curve. In particular, when the magnetic field vanishes and the charged particle moves only under the influence of gravity, its trajectory describes a geodesic of the underlying manifold.
The study of magnetic curves originates in the study of motion of a charged particle under the action of a static magnetic field (time-independent magnetic field) in Euclidean 3-space. In a static magnetic field is a divergence-free vector field V and it defines the Lorentz force , where × denotes the usual cross-product. The Lorentz equation (called also the Newton equation) is given by . Next, in order not to take into consideration the orientation of , the vector fields can be identified with 2-forms, and the divergence-free condition for vector fields becomes equivalent to closedness for 2-forms. Hence, we can generalize this result in the following manner.
On a (complete) Riemannian manifold of arbitrary dimension n, a closed 2-form F defines a magnetic field. For the magnetic background , one can define the Lorentz force as a skew-symmetric type tensor field corresponding to F via the metric g as: , . The Lorentz equation becomes , where ∇ denotes the Levi-Civita connection on M. The solutions of the Lorentz equation are called magnetic curves. As we pointed out before, for a trivial magnetic field , the trajectories are the geodesics.
An important class of magnetic fields are the
uniform magnetic fields on (complete) Riemannian manifolds, i.e., when the corresponding Lorentz force is parallel,
. Two well known examples of uniform magnetic fields are scalar multiples of the Kähler form on a
Kähler manifold and scalar multiples of the volume form on a Riemannian surface, which are generically called
Kähler magnetic fields, and were intensively studied, see e.g., [
1] and references therein. Knowing the magnetic curves corresponding to uniform magnetic fields on a (complete) Riemannian manifold
, a natural problem initiated was the study of
magnetic Jacobi fields. More precisely, a vector field
W along a magnetic curve
is called a Jacobi magnetic field derived from the uniform magnetic field
F if it satisfies the following
magnetic Jacobi equation:
where
R denotes the curvature tensor on
M. Again, let us notice that when the magnetic field is trivial,
, as magnetic curves correspond to geodesics, the magnetic Jacobi fields are just the usual Jacobi fields. Moreover, in the same manner as Jacobi fields, also the magnetic Jacobi fields are obtained by a variation of trajectories. In the study of magnetic Jacobi fields on Kähler manifolds, let us mention the papers of Adachi [
1,
2], and Shi [
3] for the particular case of magnetic Jacobi fields for surface magnetic fields. On a Riemannian manifold, the first researchers who investigated the magnetic Jacobi fields along magnetic curves for uniform magnetic fields were probably Gouda [
4] and Paternain and Paternain [
5].
At this point, we would like to recall a nice motivation in order to extend the study of magnetic Jacobi fields also on almost contact metric manifolds. The motivation originates again from the three-dimensional case. Let us denote by
an oriented three-dimensional Riemannian manifold endowed with the volume form
. The 2-forms may be identified with the vector fields via the Hodge ☆ operator. Let us denote by
F a magnetic field on
M, by
V its corresponding divergence-free vector field, and
the dual
-form of
V with respect to the metric
g. If
V is unitary, then
is an almost contact structure on
M compatible with the metric
g. Hence, the magnetic background
may be regarded as an almost contact metric manifold endowed with closed fundamental 2-form [
6].
The almost contact metric manifolds include the particular class of quasi-Sasakian manifolds, which were defined by Blair in his Ph.D. thesis [
7] (see also [
8] ) as normal almost contact metric manifolds
with closed fundamental 2-form. According to [
7], using the notion of the
rank of a quasi-Sasakian manifold, which represents the rank of the 1-form
, i.e.,
has
if
and
, and has
if
and
, the
Sasakian manifolds are quasi-Sasakian manifolds of rank
and the cosymplectic manifolds are of rank 1.
On one hand, it is worth mentioning that a challenging problem was the study of
magnetic Jacobi fields in Sasakian manifolds . In this case the Lorentz force is naturally obtained from the contact magnetic field
,
, and hence
. We notice that the Lorentz force
is no longer parallel, and thus the
magnetic field is not uniform. The complete classification of magnetic Jacobi fields along contact magnetic curves in three-dimensional Sasakian space forms is given in [
9], along with explicit examples of magnetic Jacobi fields on the unit 3-sphere
, on the Heisenberg group
, and on the model space of the SL-geometry
. These results were developed further for magnetic Jacobi fields in Sasakian space forms of dimension greater or equal to 5 [
10].
On the other hand, a
cosymplectic manifold possesses a closed fundamental 2-from, thus it defines a magnetic field. Moreover, since the field of endomorphisms
is parallel, i.e., the Lorentz force is parallel, it follows that we deal with
uniform magnetic fields on cosymplectic manifolds. The magnetic curves on cosymplectic manifolds of arbitrary dimension were completely classified in [
11]. Moreover, in the same paper [
11] it was proved that a reduction result showing that the study of the normal magnetic curves associated to a contact magnetic field on the cosymplectic manifold
reduces to their study in
. Special attention was paid to the product spaces
, in order to unify the known results in the study of magnetic curves in
and in the product symmetric spaces
and
.
The main objective of the present paper is the classification of magnetic Jacobi fields along magnetic curves derived from uniform magnetic fields on cosymplectic 3-dimensional manifolds.
The structure of the paper is as follows. In the next section we collect some fundamental results used in the sequel. Due to the strong connection of our study with the Euclidean 3-space, and since
can be endowed with a cosymplectic structure, we gradually introduce the reader in the study of magnetic Jacobi fields, presenting in
Section 3 the results obtained in
.
Section 4 deals with the main definitions on cosymplectic manifolds and some first results in the study of magnetic Jacobi fields. For example, in Proposition 2 we show that the conservation law holds true for uniform magnetic fields in cosymplectic manifolds of arbitrary dimension. Next, Proposition 4 assures that the characteristic vector field
is a magnetic Jacobi field along any normal magnetic curve in a cosymplectic 3-manifold
, while Proposition 5 says that
is a magnetic Jacobi field along a normal magnetic curve (which is not an integral curve of
) if and only if
is a cosymplectic space form
with vanishing sectional curvature
.
Section 5 contains the main results, Theorems 2 and 3 obtained in the classification of magnetic Jacobi fields in 3-dimensional cosymplectic space forms according to the case when
is regarded as magnetic field and when
, respectively. Finally, in
Section 6, Theorem 4 characterizes magnetic Jacobi fields in the product spaces
and
.
2. Magnetic Curves and Magnetic Jacobi Fields
There are two approaches in the study of magnetic curves along magnetic fields
F on (complete) Riemannian manifolds
. The first is the one mentioned in the Introduction, when a magnetic curve is regarded as a solution of the Lorentz equation:
where
∇ denotes the Levi-Civita connection on
M corresponding to the metric
g on the Riemannian manifold
M, and the Lorentz force
is defined using the magnetic field
F as
.
Notice that the magnetic curves satisfy the following conservation law, i.e., the magnetic curves evolve with constant speed. Unit speed magnetic curves are called normal magnetic curves.
On the other side, in a variational approach, the magnetic curves are solutions of a variational problem, i.e., they are the critical points of the Landau-Hall functional
(on
)
, where
is the Dirichlet energy of
and
A is the potential 1-form generating the magnetic field
F. A second variational formula for the integral
leads to the concept of magnetic Jacobi field. We say that
W is a
magnetic Jacobi field along the magnetic curve
on the magnetic background
, if it satisfies the following second order differential equation:
where
R denotes the Riemannian curvature tensor of
M. See e.g., [
1,
12].
Analogously to magnetic curves, also Jacobi magnetic fields satisfy a conservation law, i.e., if
is skew-adjoint with respect to
g, then
is constant along
(see Lemma 1.2 of [
1]). Moreover, we call a magnetic Jacobi field
W along a trajectory
normal if it satisfies
. The normal magnetic Jacobi fields are obtained naturally by variations of normal trajectories, see [
1].
A first example of a magnetic Jacobi field is the following. On a magnetic curve
the velocity vector field
is a magnetic Jacobi field along
(see [
4]).
The major difficulty in explicitly solving the magnetic Jacobi equation consists in the presence of the last term in (
1). When the covariant derivative of the Lorentz force has a particular concrete expression, we can think about solving the Equation (
1). Let us point out some particular situations. For example:
in Kähler manifolds
the (Kähler) magnetic fields are uniform, i.e., the Lorentz force
,
is parallel,
, and thus, the last term in (
1) vanishes (see e.g., [
2,
3]).
in Sasakian manifolds
also has a relatively simple expression. If
is a Sasakian manifold, the Lorentz force is defined by
, where
. The classification of nonuniform magnetic Jacobi fields is given in [
9,
10].
in cosymplectic manifolds the magnetic field is again uniform. In the case when the magnetic field
W is uniform, that is the Lorentz force
is parallel, i.e.,
, we retrieve the equation of a magnetic Jacobi field given by Gouda [
12]
where
R denotes the Riemannian curvature tensor of the cosymplectic manifold. In the sequel, this equation is of interest for us. Hence, we solve (
2) in order to find all the magnetic Jacobi fields
W in three-dimensional cosymplectic manifolds.
6. Jacobi Magnetic Fields on
and
The motivation of this section has roots in the classification theorem given by Perrone in Theorem 4.1 of [
25].
Let be a simply connected homogeneous almost cosymplectic 3-manifold. Then, either M is a Lie group G equipped with a left invariant almost cosymplectic structure, or a Riemannian product of type , where N is a simply connected Kähler surface of constant curvature.Let
be one of the two two-dimensional manifolds
or
where
is the (constant) sectional curvature. Let
be the Riemannian product manifold
, with the metric
, where
is the metric on
N and
t is the global coordinate on
. Since
N has a natural Kähler structure, one can naturally define a cosymplectic structure
on
M as follows
where
J is the complex structure on
N and
X is tangent to
N. See for more details [
26].
Let
,
be a curve on the product manifold
parametrized by the arc length, i.e.,
. We exclude the case when
is the characteristic flow, i.e., when
. This ensures that
does not reduce to a point (on
N). Suppose that
is a (normal) contact magnetic curve on the cosymplectic manifold
M, that is
satisfies the Lorentz equation
, where
∇ is the Levi-Civita connection of
g and
q is the strength. We can write this equation as
where
is the Levi-Civita connection of
. This shows that
is a (Kähler) magnetic curve on
N, not necessary normal.
Due to the homogeneity of
M we can consider
. Hence
, where
is the constant angle between
and
, called the contact angle of
. See e.g., [
11].
A vector field along may be expressed as , where is a vector field along on N. We prove the following result.
Theorem 4. Let be a magnetic Jacobi field along the normal contact magnetic curve in the product manifold , where N denotes the 2-sphere or the hyperbolic plane . Then is a magnetic Jacobi field along on N and a is an affine function. The converse also holds.
Proof. We need to analyze all terms in the magnetic Jacobi equation
Since
M is a product manifold, the curvature tensors
R and
are respectively related by the following relations
where
are tangent to
N. It follows that the magnetic Jacobi equation is equivalent to the following system
The first equation means that is a magnetic Jacobi field on N along , while the second equation says that a is an affine function. □
In the following we will sketch how
can be obtained. We mention here two (from a series of some) papers of Adachi [
1,
27].
If
the curve
is an integral curve of
and hence the contact angle is 0 or
. In such a case
where
as before. This means that one has no condition for
.
Suppose that
. Then we can decompose
in the basis
where
and
are smooth functions of
s. We can compute successively
The first equation in (
44) becomes
which implies
Remark that the first equation in (
45) is a consequence of the fact that
is a constant. A first integration in this equation leads to
with
. Replacing in the second equation of (
45) we obtain the following second order differential equation in
The Equation (
47) can be solved taking into consideration the sign of
. See e.g., Equation (
42). Then, with
obtained from (
47) we easily obtain the function
from (
46).