Isometries of complemented subRiemannian manifolds

Abstract

We show that the group of smooth isometries of a complemented sub-Riemannian manifold form a Lie group and establish dimension estimates based on the torsion of the canonical connection. We explore the interaction of curvature and the structure of isometries and Killing fields and derive a Bochner formula for Killing fields. Sub-Riemannian generalizations of classical results of Bochner and Berger are established. We also apply our theory to common sub-categories of complemented sub-Riemannian geometries and show how to compute the isometry groups for several examples, including SO(n), SL(n) and the rototranslation group.