A complete classification is given of harmonic morphisms to a surface and conformal foliations by geodesics, with or without isolated singularities, of a simply-connected space form. The method is to associate to any such a holomorphic map from a Riemann surface into the space of geodesics of the space form. Properties such as nonintersecting fibres (or leaves) are translated into conditions on the holomorphic mapping which show it must have a simple form corresponding to a standard example.

In the first paper of this series we studied on a compact regular contact manifold the integral of the Ricci curvature in the direction of the characteristic vector field considered as a functional on the set of all associated metrics. We showed that the critical points of this functional are the metrics for which the characteristic vector field generates a 1-parameter group of isometries and conjectured that the result might be true without the regularity of the contact structure. In the present paper we show that this conjecture is false by studying this problem on the tangent sphere bundle of a Riemannian manifold. In particular the standard associated metric is a critical point if and only if the base manifold is of constant curvature +1 or −1; in the latter case the characteristic vector field does not generate a 1-parameter group of isometries.

The study of the integral of the scalar curvature, ∫MRdVg, as a function on the set of all Riemannian metrics of the same total volume on a compact manifold is now classical, and the critical points are the Einstein metrics. On a compact contact manifold we consider this and ∫M (R − R* − 4n2) dv, with R* the *-scalar curvature, as functions on the set of metrics associated to the contact structure. For these integrals the critical point conditions then become certain commutativity conditions on the Ricci operator and the fundamental collineation of the contact metric structure. In particular, Sasakian metrics, when they exist, are maxima for the second function.

We study the existence of zeros of a perturbed nonlinear operator near a zero of the unperturbed operator in the case where both operators are invariant under a symmetry group. To do this, we first correct some work of Rubinsztein on the G-homotopy groups of spheres.