Publisher's Synopsis
This monograph deals with the Riemannian geometry of both symplectic and contact manifolds, with particular emphasis on the latter. The text is carefully presented. Topics unfold systematically from Chapter 1, which examines the general theory of symplectic manifolds. Principal circle bundles (Chapter 2) are then discussed as a prelude to the Boothby--Wang fibration of a compact regular contact manifold in Chapter 3, which deals with the general theory of contact manifolds. Chapter 4 focuses on the general setting of Riemannian metrics associated with both symplectic and contact structures, and Chapter 5 is devoted to integral submanifolds of the contact subbundle. Topics treated in the subsequent chapters include Sasakian manifolds, the important study of the curvature of contact metric manifolds, submanifold theory in both the K¿hler and Sasakian settings, tangent sphere bundles, curvature functionals, complex contact manifolds and 3 Sasakian manifolds. The book serves both as a general reference for mathematicians to the basic properties of symplectic and contact manifolds and as an excellent resource for graduate students and researchers in the Riemannian geometric arena. The prerequisite for this text is a basic course in Riemannian geometry.
