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We consider the evolution of a free quantum particle on the Grushin cylinder, under different type of quantizations. In particular we are interested to understand if the particle can cross the singular set, i.e., the set where the structure is not Riemannian. We consider intrinsic and extrinsic quantizations, where the latter are obtained by embedding the Grushin structure isometrically in ${\bf R}^3$ (with singularities). As a byproduct we provide formulas to embed the Grushin cylinder in ${\bf R^3}$ that could be useful for other purposes. Such formulas are not global, but permit to study the embedding arbitrarily close to the singular set. We extend these results to the case of $\alpha $-Grushin cylinders., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures

We say that a control system is locally controllable if the attainable set from any state $x$ contains an open neighborhood of $x$, while it is controllable if the attainable set from any state is the entire state manifold. We show in this note that a control system satisfying local controllability is controllable. Our self-contained proof is alternative to the combination of two previous results by Kevin Grasse., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables; this updated version includes new citations to previous literature

We show that a bilinear control system is approximately controllable if and only if it is controllable in $\mathbb{R}^{n}\setminus\{0\}$. We approach this problem by looking at the foliation made by the orbits of the system, and by showing that there does not exist a codimension-one foliation in $\mathbb{R}^{n}\setminus\{0\}$ with dense leaves that are everywhere transversal to the radial direction. The proposed geometric approach allows to extend the results to homogeneous systems that are angularly controllable., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures

Given a surface $S$ in a 3D contact sub-Riemannian manifold $M$, we investigate the metric structure induced on $S$ by $M$, in the sense of length spaces. First, we define a coefficient $\widehat K$ at characteristic points that determines locally the characteristic foliation of $S$. Next, we identify some global conditions for the induced distance to be finite. In particular, we prove that the induced distance is finite for surfaces with the topology of a sphere embedded in a tight coorientable distribution, with isolated characteristic points., Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures

We are concerned with stochastic processes on surfaces in three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifolds. Employing the Riemannian approximations to the sub-Riemannian manifold which make use of the Reeb vector field, we obtain a second order partial differential operator on the surface arising as the limit of Laplace-Beltrami operators. The stochastic process associated with the limiting operator moves along the characteristic foliation induced on the surface by the contact distribution. We show that for this stochastic process elliptic characteristic points are inaccessible, while hyperbolic characteristic points are accessible from the separatrices. We illustrate the results with examples and we identify canonical surfaces in the Heisenberg group, and in ${\rm SU}(2)$ and ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$ equipped with the standard sub-Riemannian contact structures as model cases for this setting. Our techniques further allow us to derive an expression for an intrinsic Gaussian curvature of a surface in a general three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold., Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures