Developing Maps and Engel Automorphisms

Abstract

A completely nonintegrable $2$-dimensional distribution on a $4$-manifold is called an Engel structure. A $4$-manifold with an Engel structure is called an Engel manifold. The developing map for an Engel manifold is very important tool to determine the Engel structure. Montgomery used it to prove that an Engel automorphism is determined by the values on a global slice. Moreover, Montgomery constructed Engel manifolds whose automorphism group is small. In this paper, we prove that the automorphism group of an Engel manifold is embedded into the automorphism group of the Cartan prolongation of a contact $3$-orbifold, if the developing map is not a covering map. As an application, we will construct an Engel manifold whose automorphism group is trivial.