Stability of contact metric manifolds and unit vector fields of minimum energy

Abstract

In this paper we obtain criteria of stability for ηEinstein k-contact manifolds, for Sasakian manifolds of constant ϕ-sectional curvature and for 3-dimensional Sasakian manifolds. Moreover, we show that a stable compact Einstein contact metric manifold M is Sasakian if and only if the Reeb vector field ξ minimises the energy functional. In particular, the Reeb vector field of a Sasakian manifold M of constant ϕ-holomorphic sectional curvature +1 minimises the energy functional if and only if M is not simply connected.