On Legendre curves in contact 3-manifolds

Abstract

It is first observed that on a 3-dimensional Sasakian manifold the torsion of a Legendre curve is identically equal to +1. It is then shown that, conversely, if a curve on a Sasakian 3-manifold has constant torsion +1 and satisfies the initial conditions at one point for a Legendre curve, it is a Legendre curve. Furthermore, among contact metric structures, this property is characteristic of Sasakian metrics. For the standard contact structure onR3 with its standard Sasakian metric the curvature of a Legendre curve is shown to be twice the curvature of its projection to thexy-plane with respect to the Euclidean metric. Thus this metric onR3 is more natural for the study of Legendre curves than the Euclidean metric.