abstract:
In this talk describe the two functional invariants of a 3D contact sub-Riemannian structure, discussing their role in the classification of left-invariant sub-Riemannian structures on three dimensional Lie groups.
We then explicitly compute, in the case of a 3D contact structure, the first two
coefficients of the small time asymptotics expansion of the heat kernel on the
diagonal, expressing them in terms of the two basic functional invariants.