On the classification of prolongations up to engel homotopy

Abstract

In (Casals, Pérez, del Pino, and Presas, preprint) it was shown that Engel structures satisfy an existence –principle, and the question of whether a full –principle holds was left open. In this note we address the classification problem, up to Engel deformation, of Cartan and Lorentz prolongations. We show that it reduces to their formal data as soon as the turning number is large enough. Somewhat separately, we study the homotopy type of the space of Cartan prolongations, describing completely its connected components in the overtwisted case.