The sub-Riemannian length spectrum for screw motions of constant pitch on flat and hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Abstract: Let M be an oriented three-dimensional Riemannian manifold of constant sectional curvature k = 0,1,-1 and let SO(M) be its direct orthonormal frame bundle (direct refers to positive orientation), which may be thought of as the set of all positions of a small body in M. Given lambda in R, there is a three-dimensional distribution D^lambda on SO(M) accounting for infinitesimal rototranslations of constant pitch lambda. When lambda is different from k^2, there is a canonical sub-Riemannian structure on D^lambda. We present a geometric characterization of its geodesics, using a previous Lie theoretical description. For k = 0,-1, we compute the sub-Riemannian length spectrum of (SO(M),D^lambda) in terms of the complex length spectrum of M (given by the lengths and the holonomies of the periodic geodesics) when M has positive injectivity radius. In particular, for two complex length isospectral closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds (even if they are not isometric), the associated sub-Riemannian metrics on their direct orthonormal bundles are length isospectral.