Quaternionic Heisenberg groups as naturally reductive homogeneous spaces

In this note, we describe the geometry of the quaternionic Heisenberg groups from a Riemannian viewpoint. We show, in all dimensions, that they carry an almost $3$-contact metric structure which allows us to define the metric connection that equips these groups with the structure of a naturally reductive homogeneous space. It turns out that this connection, which we shall call the canonical connection because of its analogy to the $3$-Sasaki case, preserves the horizontal and vertical distributions and even the quaternionic contact structure of the quaternionic Heisenberg groups. We focus on the $7$-dimensional case and prove that the canonical connection can also be obtained by means of a cocalibrated $G_2$ structure. We then study the spinorial properties of this group and present the noteworthy fact that it is the only known example of a manifold which carries generalized Killing spinors with three different eigenvalues.

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