Under suitable conditions, we show that the Euler characteristic of a foliated Riemannian manifold can be computed only from curvature invariants which are transverse to the leaves. Our proof uses the hypoelliptic sub-Laplacian on forms recently introduced by two of the authors in Baudoin and Grong (Ann Glob Anal Geom 56(2):403–428, 2019).

We obtain a sub-Riemannian version of the classical Gauss-Bonnet theorem. We consider 3 dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifolds with a corresponding metric extension and obtain a pure sub-Riemannian metric in the limit for subsurfaces. In particular, we are able to recover topological information concentrated around the characteristic set of points where the tangent space to the surface and contact structure coincide.

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Under suitable conditions, we show that the Euler characteristic of a foliated Riemannian manifold can be computed only from curvature invariants which are transverse to the leaves. Our proof uses the hypoelliptic sub-Laplacian on forms recently introduced by two of the authors in [4].