Let M be a G2-manifold. We consider an almost CR-structure on the sphere bundle of unit tangent vectors on M, called the CR twistor space. This CR-structure is integrable if and only if M is a holonomy G2 manifold. We interpret G2-instanton bundles as CR-holomorphic bundles on its twistor space.
We first make a little survey of the twistor theory for hypercomplex, generalized hypercomplex, quaternionic or generalized quaternionic manifolds. This last theory was iniated by Pantilie, who shows that any generalized almost quaternionic manifold equipped with an appropriate connection admit a twistor space with an almost generalized complex structure. The aim of this article is to give an integrability criterion for this generalized almost complex structure and to give some examples especially in the case of generalized hyperkähler manifolds using the generalized Bismut connection, introdu…
A theorem of Kuranishi tells us that the moduli space of complex structures on any smooth compact manifold is always locally a finite-dimensional space. Globally, however, this is simply not true; we display examples in which the moduli space contains a sequence of regions for which the local dimension tends to infinity. These examples naturally arise from the twistor theory of hyper-Kaehler manifolds.
We compute the hessian of the natural Hermitian form successively on the Calabi family of a hyperkähler manifold, on the twistor space of a 4-dimensional anti-self-dual Riemannian manifold and on the twistor space of a quaternionic Kähler manifold. We show a strong convexity property of the cycle space of twistor lines on the Calabi family of a hyperkähler manifold. We also prove convexity properties of the 1-cycle space of the twistor space of a 4-dimensional anti-self-dual Einstein manifold of non-positive scalar curvature and of the 1-cycle space of the twistor space of a quaternionic Kähle…
In this note, we prove that the CR manifold which is induced from the canonical parabolic geometry of a quaternionic contact (qc) manifold via a Fefferman-type construction is equivalent to the CR twistor space of the qc manifold defined by O. Biquard.
In this paper we introduce the twistor space of a Riemannian manifold with an even Clifford structure. This notion generalizes the twistor space of quaternion-Hermitian manifolds and weak-Spin(9) structures. We also construct almost complex structures on the twistor space for parallel even Clifford structures and check their integrability. Moreover, we prove that in some cases one can give Kähler and Nearly-Kähler metrics to these spaces.
Let $M$ be a hyperkaehler manifold, and $η$ a closed, positive (1,1)-form which is degenerate everywhere on $M$. We associate to $η$ a family of complex structures on $M$, called a degenerate twistor family, and parametrized by a complex line. When $η$ is a pullback of a Kaehler form under a Lagrangian fibration $L$, all the fibers of degenerate twistor family also admit a Lagrangian fibration, with the fibers isomorphic to that of $L$. Degenerate twistor families can be obtained by taking limits of twistor families, as one of the Kahler forms in the hyperkahler triple goes to $η$.
We introduce a natural notion of quaternionic map between almost quaternionic manifolds and we prove the following, for maps of rank at least one: 1) A map between quaternionic manifolds endowed with the integrable almost twistorial structures is twistorial if and only if it is quaternionic. 2) A map between quaternionic manifolds endowed with the nonintegrable almost twistorial structures is twistorial if and only if it is quaternionic and totally-geodesic. As an application, we describe the quaternionic maps between open sets of quaternionic projective spaces.
Twistor forms are a natural generalization of conformal vector fields on Riemannian manifolds. They are defined as sections in the kernel of a conformally invariant first order differential operator. We study twistor forms on compact Kaehler manifolds and give a complete description up to special forms in the middle dimension. In particular, we show that they are closely related to Hamiltonian 2-forms. This provides the first examples of compact Kaehler manifolds with non-parallel twistor forms in any even degree.
In a general and non metrical framework, we introduce the class of co-CR quaternionic manifolds, which contains the class of quaternionic manifolds, whilst in dimension three it particularizes to give the Einstein-Weyl spaces. We show that these manifolds have a rich natural Twistor Theory and, along the way, we obtain a heaven space construction for quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds.
We characterize HKT structure in terms of nondegenrate complex Poisson bivector on hypercomplex manifold. We extend the characterization to the twistor space. After considering the flat case in detail, we show that the twistor space of hyperkaehler manifold admits a holomorphic Poisson structure. We briefly mention the relation to quaternionic and hypercomplex deformations on tori and K3 surfaces
The theory of twistors on foliated manifolds is developed and the twistor space of the normal bundle is constructed. It is demonstrated that the classical constructions of the twistor theory lead to foliated objects and permit to formulate and prove foliated versions of some well-known results on holomorphic mappings. Since any orbifold can be understood as the leaf space of a suitable defined Riemannian foliation we obtain orbifold versions of the classical results as a simple consequence of the results on foliated mappings.
We show that a 1-parameter family Ricci flow ancient solutions arises from the natural collapsings of the twistor space of positive quaternion Kähler manifolds. We use these ancient solutions to show that a positive quaternion Kähler manifold is isometric to one of the Wolf spaces.
Non-trivial examples of Riemannian almost product structures are constructed on the product bundle of the positive and negative twistor spaces of an oriented Riemannian four-manifold. The Gil-Medrano and Naveira types of these structures are determined and a geometric interpretation of the corresponding classes is given.
We give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the Penrose-Ward transformation to work on almost $G_2$-manifolds, endowed with natural almost twistorial structures.
We describe the relation between supersymmetric sigma-models on hyperkahler manifolds, projective superspace, and twistor space. We review the essential aspects and present a coherent picture with a number of new results.
On a Kähler spin manifold Kählerian twistor spinors are a natural analogue of twistor spinors on Riemannian spin manifolds. They are defined as sections in the kernel of a first order differential operator adapted to the Kähler structure, called Kählerian twistor (Penrose) operator. We study Kählerian twistor spinors and give a complete description of compact Kähler manifolds of constant scalar curvature admitting such spinors. As in the Riemannian case, the existence of Kählerian twistor spinors is related to the lower bound of the spectrum of the Dirac operator.
We characterise, in the setting of the Kodaira-Spencer deformation theory, the twistor spaces of (co-)CR quaternionic manifolds. As an application, we prove that, locally, the leaf space of any nowhere zero quaternionic vector field on a quaternionic manifold is endowed with a natural co-CR quaternionic structure. Also, for any positive integers $k$ and $l$, with $kl$ even, we obtain the geometric objects whose twistorial counterparts are complex manifolds endowed with a conjugation without fixed points and which preserves an embedded Riemann sphere whose normal bundle is $l$ times the line bu…
Let M be a hyperkähler manifold. The S^2-family of complex structures compatible with the hyperkähler metric can be assembled into a single complex structure on Z=MxS^2; the resulting complex manifold is known as the twistor space of M. We describe the analogous construction for generalized complex structures in the sense of Hitchin. Specifically, we exhibit a natural S^2xS^2-family of generalized complex structures compatible with the hyperkähler metric, and assemble them into a single generalized complex structure on X=MxS^2xS^2. We call the resulting generalized complex manifold the general…
The twistor construction for Riemannian manifolds is extended to the case of manifolds endowed with generalized metrics (in the sense of generalized geometry à la Hitchin). The generalized twistor space associated to such a manifold is defined as the bundle of generalized complex structures on the tangent spaces of the manifold compatible with the given generalized metric. This space admits natural generalized almost complex structures whose integrability conditions are found in the paper. An interesting feature of the generalized twistor spaces discussed in it is the existence of intrinsic is…
It is shown that any irreducible analytic 1-flat $G$-structure as well as any analytic torsion-free affine connection with irreducibly acting holonomy group can, in principle, be contstructed by twistor methods.
A hypercomplex structure on a differentiable manifold consists of three integrable almost complex structures that satisfy quaternionic relations. If, in addition, there exists a metric on the manifold which is Hermitian with respect to the three structures, and such that the corresponding Hermitian forms are closed, the manifold is said to be hyperkaehler. In the paper "Non-Hermitian Yang-Mills connections", Kaledin and Verbitsky proved that the twistor space of a hyperkaehler manifold admits a balanced metric; these were first studied in the article "On the existence of special metrics in com…
We investigate the twistor space and the Grassmannian fibre bundle of a Lorentzian 4-space with natural almost optical structures and its induced CR-structures. The twistor spaces of the Lorentzian space forms $\R^4_1, \Di{S}^4_1$ and $\Di{H}^4_1$ are explicitly discussed. The given twistor construction is applied to surface theory in Lorentzian 4-spaces. Immersed spacelike surfaces in a Lorentzian 4-space with special geometric properties like semi-umbilic surfaces and surfaces that have mean curvature of vanishing lengths correspond to holomorphic curves in the Lorentzian twistor space. For …
We show that the $G_2$-manifolds and certain ${\rm Spin}(7)$-manifolds are endowed with natural Riemannian twistorial structures. Along the way, the exceptional holonomy representations are reviewed and other related facts are considered.
Motivated by the possible characterization of Sasakian manifolds in terms of twistor forms, we give the complete classification of compact Riemannian manifolds carrying a Killing vector field whose covariant derivative (viewed as a 2-form) is a twistor form.
In a general and non metrical framework, we introduce the class of CR quaternionic manifolds containing the class of quaternionic manifolds, whilst in dimension three it particularizes to, essentially, give the conformal manifolds. We show that these manifolds have a rich natural Twistor Theory and, along the way, we obtain a heaven space construction for quaternionic manifolds.
In this paper, we characterize Riemannian 4-manifold in terms of its almost Hermitian twistor spaces $(Z,g_t,\mathbb{J}_{\pm})$. Some special metric conditions (including Balanced metric condition, first Gauduchon metric condition) on $(Z,g_t,\mathbb{J}_{\pm})$ are studied. For the first Chern form of a natural unitary connection on the vertical tangent bundle over the twistor space $Z$, we can recover J. Fine and D. Panov's result on the condition of the first Chern form being symplectic and P. Gauduchon's result on the condition of the first Chern form being a (1,1)-form respectively, by usi…
Let $M$ be a quaternionic manifold, $\dim M=4k$, whose twistor space is a Fano manifold. We prove the following: (a) $M$ admits a reduction to $Sp(1) \times GL(k,H)$ if and only if $M=HP^k$, (b) either $b_2(M)=0$ or $M=Gr_2(k+2,C)$. This generalizes results of S. Salamon and C.R. LeBrun, respectively, who obtained the same conclusions under the assumption that $M$ is a complete quaternionic-Kaehler manifold with positive scalar curvature.
For the twistor spaces of the Bochner-Kähler manifold $M = H^l \times P^n$, systems of holomorphic coordinates are constructed. As an application of them, an explicit description of the moduli space of relative deformations of fibers of $M$'s twistor space is given.
Let $S$ be a smooth rational curve on a complex manifold $M$. It is called ample if its normal bundle is positive. We assume that $M$ is covered by smooth holomorphic deformations of $S$. The basic example of such a manifold is a twistor space of a hyperkahler or a 4-dimensional anti-selfdual Riemannian manifold $X$ (not necessarily compact). We prove "a holography principle" for such a manifold: any meromorphic function defined in a neighbourhood $U$ of $S$ can be extended to $M$, and any section of a holomorphic line bundle can be extended from $U$ to $M$. This is used to define the notion o…
In this expository paper we review some twistor techniques and recall the problem of finding compact differentiable manifolds that can carry both Kähler and non-Kähler complex structures. Such examples were constructed independently by M. Atiyah, A. Blanchard and E. Calabi in the $1950$'s. In the $1980$'s V. Tsanov gave an example of a simply connected manifold that admits both Kähler and non-Kähler complex structures - the twistor space of a $K3$ surface. Here we show that the quaternion twistor space of a hyperkähler manifold has the same property.
A study is made of algebraic curves and surfaces in the flag manifold $\mathbb{F}=SU(3)/T^2$, and their configuration relative to the twistor projection $π$ from $\mathbb{F}$ to the complex projective plane $\mathbb{CP}^2$, defined with the help of an anti-holomorphic involution $j$. This is motivated by analogous studies of algebraic surfaces of low degree in the twistor space $\mathbb{CP}^3$ of $S^4$. Deformations of twistor fibres project to real surfaces in $\mathbb{CP}^2$, whose metric geometry is investigated. Attention is then focussed on toric Del Pezzo surfaces that are the simplest t…
We introduce integrable complex structures on twistor spaces fibered over complex manifolds. We then show, in particular, that the twistor spaces associated with generalized Kahler, SKT and strong HKT manifolds all naturally admit complex structures. Moreover, in the strong HKT case we construct a metric and three compatible complex structures on the twistor space that have equal torsions.
Let (M,g) be a Riemannian 4-manifold. The twistor space Z->M is a CP1-bundle whose total space Z admits a natural metric h. The aim of this article is to study properties of complex structures on (Z,h) which are compatible with the CP1-fibration and the metric h. The results obtained enable us to translate some metric properties on M in terms of complex properties on its twistor space Z.
We study twistor forms on products of compact Riemannian manifolds and show that they are defined by Killing forms on the factors. The main result of this note is a necessary step in the classification of compact Riemannian manifolds with non-generic holonomy carrying twistor forms.
We show that the CR structure on the twistor space of a quaternionic contact structure described by Biquard is normal if and only if the Ricci curvature of the Biquard connection commutes with the endomorphisms in the quaternionic structure of the contact distribution.
A Hermitian metric $ω$ on a complex manifold is called SKT or pluriclosed if $dd^cω=0$. Let M be a twistor space of a compact, anti-selfdual Riemannian manifold, admitting a pluriclosed Hermitian metric. We prove that in this case M is Kähler, hence isomorphic to $\C P^3$ or a flag space. This result is obtained from rational connectedness of the twistor space, due to F. Campana. As an aside, we prove that the moduli space of rational curves on the twistor space of a K3 surface is Stein.
The twistor space of self-dual positive Einstein manifolds naturally admits two 1-parameter families of Riemannian metrics, one is the family of canonical deformation metrics and the other is the family introduced by B. Chow and D. Yang in 1989. The purpose of this paper is to compare these two families. In particular we compare the Ricci tensor and the behavior under the Ricci flow of these families. As an application, we propose a new proof to the fact that a locally irreducible self-dual positive Einstein 4-manifold is isometric to either $S^4$ with a standard metric or $\PP^2(\C)$ with a F…
We generalize the hyperkaehler quotient construction to the situation where there is no group action preserving the hyperkaehler structure but for each complex structure there is an action of a complex group preserving the corresponding complex symplectic structure. Many (known and new) hyperkaehler manifolds arise as quotients in this setting. For example, all hyperkaehler structures on semisimple coadjoint orbits of a complex semisimple Lie group $G$ arise as such quotients of $T^*G$. The generalized Legendre transform construction of Lindstroem and Rocek is also explained in this framework.
We construct an explicit example of a stable bundle on the twistor space $\mathrm{Tw}(M)$ of a hyperkähler manifold $M$ whose restrictions to all the fibres of the natural twistor projection $π: \mathrm{Tw}(M) \to \mathbb{CP}^1$ are nonstable. We also describe the relationship between bundles on $\mathrm{Tw}(M)$ that do not have subsheaves of strictly lower rank and bundles that stably restrict to the fibres of $π$, and announce a result whose proof will appear in a forthcoming paper.
We introduce a plethora of skew algebroids on twistor spaces and describe the corresponding foliations. In a forthcoming paper, we use these algebroids to derive results about bihermitian manifolds, also known as generalized Kahler manifolds.
A manifold with an irreducible $SO(3)$-structure is a $5$-manifold $M$ whose structure group can be reduced to the group $SO(3)$, non-standardly imbedded in $SO(5)$. The study of such manifolds has been initiated by M. Bobieński and P. Nurowski who, in particular, have shown that one can define four $CR$-structures on a twistor-like $7$-dimensional space associated to $M$. In the present paper it is observed that these $CR$-structures are induced by almost contact metric structures. The purpose of the paper is to study the problem of normality of these structures. The main result gives necessa…
Moduli spaces of holomorphic disks in a complex manifold Z, with boundaries constrained to lie in a maximal totally real submanifold P, have recently been found to underlie a number of geometrically rich twistor correspondences. The purpose of this paper is to develop a general Fredholm regularity criterion for holomorphic curves-with-boundary, and then show how this applies, in particular, to various moduli problems of twistor-theoretic interest.
Let $f:X\to Y$ be a morphism of complex manifolds. Suppose that $X$ is a Kähler manifold. Let $(\mathcal{T},\mathcal{S})$ be a regular polarized pure twistor $\mathcal{D}$-module of weight $w$ on $X$ whose support is proper over $Y$. We prove the Hard Lefschetz Theorem for the push-forward of $(\mathcal{T},\mathcal{S})$ by $f$. As one of the key steps, we obtain the twistor version of a theorem of Kashiwara and Kawai about the Hodge structure on the intersection complex of polarized variation of Hodge structure.
In 1984 LeBrun constructed a CR-twistor space over an arbitrary conformal Riemannian 3-manifold and proved that the CR-structure is formally integrable. This twistor construction has been generalized by Rossi in 1985 for $m$-dimensional Riemannian manifolds endowed with a $(m-1)$-fold vector cross product (VCP). In 2011 Verbitsky generalized LeBrun's construction of twistor-spaces to $7$-manifolds endowed with a $G_2$-structure. In this paper we unify and generalize LeBrun's, Rossi's and Verbitsky's construction of a CR-twistor space to the case where a Riemannian manifold $(M, g)$ has a VCP s…
The notions of a twistor space of a contact manifold and a contact connection on such a manifold have been introduced by L. Vezzoni as extensions of the corresponding notions in the case of a symplectic manifold. Given a contact connection on a contact manifold one can define an almost $CR$-structure on its twistor space and Vezzoni has found the integrability condition for this structure. In the present paper it is observed that the $CR$-structure is induced by an almost contact metric structure. The main goal of the paper is to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for normality of this…
The target space of a (4,0) supersymmetric two-dimensional sigma model with Wess-Zumino term has a connection with totally skew-symmetric torsion and holonomy contained in Sp(n)Sp(1) (resp. Sp(n)), QKT (resp. HKT)-spaces. We study the geometry of QKT, HKT manifold and their twistor spaces. We show that the Swann bundle of a QKT manifold admits a HKT structure with special symmetry if and only if the twistor space of the QKT manifold admits an almost hermitian structure with totally skew-symmetric Nijenhuis tensor, thus connecting two structures arising from quantum field theories and supersymm…
We construct a generalization of twistor spaces of hypercomplex manifolds and hyper-Kahler manifolds $M$, by generalizing the twistor $\mathbb{P}^{1}$ to a more general complex manifold $Q$. The resulting manifold $X$ is complex if and only if $Q$ admits a holomorphic map to $\mathbb{P}^1$. We make branched double covers of these manifolds. Some class of these branched double covers can give rise to non-Kahler Calabi-Yau manifolds. We show that these manifolds $X$ and their branched double covers are non-Kahler. In the cases that $Q$ is a balanced manifold, the resulting manifold $X$ and its s…
In this paper we continue our study of the fourth order transgression on hyperähler manifolds introduced in the previous paper. We give a local construction for the fourth-order transgression of the Chern character form of an arbitrary vector bundle supplied with a self-dual connection on a four dimensional hyperkähler manifold. The construction is based on the harmonic twistor formalism. Remarkably, the resulted expression for the fourth order transgression is given in terms of the determinant of the $\bar{\partial}$-operator defined on fibers of the twistor fibration.