On the existence of local quaternionic contact geometries

We exploit the Cartan-Kahler theory to prove the local existence of real analytic quaternionic contact structures for any prescribed values of the respective curvature functions and their covariant derivatives at a given point on a manifold. We show that, in a certain sense, the different real analytic quaternionic contact geometries in 4n + 3 dimensions depend, modulo diffeomorphisms, on 2n + 2 real analytic functions of 2n + 3 variables.