Sub-Riemannian Ricci curvatures and universal diameter bounds for 3-Sasakian manifolds

Abstract

For a fat sub-Riemannian structure, we introduce three canonical Ricci curvatures in the sense of Agrachev–Zelenko–Li. Under appropriate bounds we prove comparison theorems for conjugate lengths, Bonnet–Myers type results and Laplacian comparison theorems for the intrinsic sub-Laplacian. As an application, we consider the sub-Riemannian structure of 3-Sasakian manifolds, for which we provide explicit curvature formulas. We prove that any complete 3-Sasakian structure of dimension 4d+3, with d>1, has sub-Riemannian diameter bounded by π. When d=1, a similar statement holds under additional Ricci bounds. These results are sharp for the natural sub-Riemannian structure on S4d+3

of the quaternionic Hopf fibrations: S3↪S4d+3→HPd, whose exact sub-Riemannian diameter is π, for all d⩾1 .