A diffeomorphism between the twistor spaces of two Riemannian metrics on a smooth manifold preserving the fibres is defined based on a well-known construction. It is shown that this bundle isomorphim is a holomorphic map with respect to the Atiyah-Hitchin-Singer, respectively Eells-Salamon, almost complex structure if and only if the two metrics are conformal, respectively homothetic. In these cases, the diffeomorphism is the identity map and the result obtained provides an interpretation of the well-known fact that the Atiyah-Hitchin-Singer almost complex structure of a twistor space is invariant under conformal changes of the metric on the base manifold, while that of Eells-Salamon is not invariant in general. The more general problem of when an arbitrary bundle isomorphism between twisor spaces is holomorphic is also considered. Another problem discussed in the paper is when the diffeomorphism mentioned above is a harmonic map with respect to natural families of Riemannian metrics on the twistor spaces defined by means of the two Riemannian metrics. It is proved that if the metrics are conformal this happens if and only if they are homothetic.
We define, on smooth manifolds, the notions of almost twistorial structure and twistorial map, thus providing a unified framework for all known examples of twistor spaces. The condition of being harmonic morphisms naturally appears among the geometric properties of submersive twistorial maps between low-dimensional Weyl spaces endowed with a nonintegrable almost twistorial structure due to Eells and Salamon. This leads to the twistorial characterisation of harmonic morphisms between Weyl spaces of dimensions four and three. Also, we give a thorough description of the twistorial maps with one-d…
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.
A conformal map from a Riemann surface to the Euclidean four-space is explained in terms of its twistor lift. A local factorization of a differential of a conformal map is obtained. As an application, the factorization of a differential provides an upper bound of the area of a super-conformal map around a branch point.
We show that given a harmonic map $φ$ from a Riemann surface to a classical compact simply connected inner symmetric space, there is a $J_2$-holomorphic twistor lift of $φ$ (or its negative) if and only if it is nilconformal. In the case of harmonic maps of finite uniton number, we give algebraic formulae in terms of holomorphic data which describes their extended solutions. In particular, this gives explicit formulae for the twistor lifts of all harmonic maps of finite uniton number from a surface to the above symmetric spaces.
We deal here with the geometry of the twistor fibration $\mathcal{Z} \to \bb{S}^3_1$ over the De Sitter 3-space. The total space $\mathcal{Z}$ is a five dimensional reductive homogeneous space with two canonical invariant almost CR structures. Fixed the normal metric on $\mathcal{Z}$ we study the harmonic map equation for smooth maps of Riemann surfaces into $\mathcal{Z}$. A characterization of spacelike surfaces with harmonic twistor lifts to $\mathcal{Z}$ is obtained. It is also shown that the harmonic map equation for twistor lifts can be formulated as the curvature vanishing of an $\bb{S}^…
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 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.
In contrast to the classical twistor spaces whose fibres are 2-spheres, we introduce twistor spaces over manifolds with almost quaternionic structures of the second kind in the sense of P. Libermann whose fibres are hyperbolic planes. We discuss two natural almost complex structures on such a twistor space and their holomorphic functions.
In this paper a bijective correspondence between superminimal surfaces of an oriented Riemannian $4$-manifold and particular Lagrangian submanifolds of the twistor space over the $4$-manifold is proven. More explicitly, for every superminimal surface a submanifold of the twistor space is constructed which is Lagrangian for all the natural almost Hermitian structures on the twistor space. The twistor fibration restricted to the constructed Lagrangian gives a circle bundle over the superminimal surface. Conversely, if a submanifold of the twistor space is Lagrangian for all the natural almost He…
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.
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…
We show that given a conformal structure whose holonomy representation fixes a totally lightlike subspace of arbitrary dimension, there is always a local metric in the conformal class off a singular set which is Ricci-isotropic and gives rise to a parallel, totally lightlike distribution on the tangent bundle. This naturally applies to parallel spin tractors resp. twistor spinors on conformal spin manifolds and clarifies which twistor spinors are locally equivalent to parallel spinors. Moreover, we study the zero set of a twistor spinor using the curved orbit decomposition for parabolic geomet…
In this paper, following the constructions of N. R. O'Brian, J. H. Rawnsley and I. Vaisman, we define four almost Hermitian structures (up to conjugation) on the twistor space of a Hermitian surface by using canonical connections, including the Lichnerowicz connection and the Chern connection. We also study the relations between the natural geometry of the twistor spaces and the geometry of Hermitian surfaces.
We study a natural functional on the space of holomorphic sections of the Deligne-Hitchin moduli space of a compact Riemann surface, generalizing the energy of equivariant harmonic maps corresponding to twistor lines. We give a link to a natural meromorphic connection on the hyperholomorphic line bundle recently constructed by Hitchin. Moreover, we prove that for a certain class of real holomorphic sections of the Deligne-Hitchin moduli space, the functional is basically given by the Willmore energy of corresponding (equivariant) conformal map to the 3-sphere. As an application we use the func…
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.
Every almost Hermitian structure $(g,J)$ on a four-manifold $M$ determines a hypersurface $Σ_J$ in the (positive) twistor space of $(M,g)$ consisting of the complex structures anti-commuting with $J$. In this note we find the conditions under which $Σ_J$ is minimal with respect to a natural Riemannian metric on the twistor space in the cases when $J$ is integrable or symplectic. Several examples illustrating the obtained results are also discussed.
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.
Twistor correspondences for R-invariant indefinite self-dual conformal structures on R^4 are established explicitly. These correspondences are written down by using a natural integral transform from functions on a two dimensional cylinder to functions on the flat Lorentz space R^{1,2} which is related to the wave equation and the Radon transform. A general method on the twistor construction of indefinite self-dual 4-spaces and indefinite Einstein-Weyl 3-spaces are also summarized.
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.
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…
In this paper, we provide a correspondence between certain 5-dimensional complex spacetimes and 4-dimensional twistor spaces. The spacetimes are almost contact manifolds whose curvature tensor satisfies certain conditions. By using the correspondence, we show that a 5-dimensional K-contact manifold can be obtained from the Ren-Wang twistor space, which is obtained from two copies of \C^4 identifying open subsets by a holomorphic map. From this result, the Ren-Wang twistor space can be interpreted in the framework of Itoh.
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 work a proposal for definition of twistors on generic curved spaces is exposed and investigated. We consider superpositions of nearly autoparallel and nearly geodesic maps (nearly conformal maps, nc-maps) of (pseudo-)Riemannian spaces as generalizations of conformal transforms. We introduce the nearly autoparallel twistor equations being compatible on nc-flat spaces and study nearly autoparallel twistor structures generating curved spaces and vacuum Einstein equations.
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 …
In this paper we provide a classification of all Moishezon twistor spaces on the connected sum of four complex projective planes. This is given by means of the anticanonical system of the twistor spaces. In particular, we show that the anticanonical map is birational, two to one over the image, or otherwise the image of the anticanonical map is a rational surface. We also obtain the structure of the images of the anticanonical map in each of the three cases in explicit forms.
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…
Motivated by generalized geometry (à la Hitchin), we discuss the integrability conditions for four natural almost complex structures on the product bundle ${\mathcal Z}\times {\mathcal Z}\to M$, where ${\mathcal Z}$ is the twistor space of a Riemannian 4-manifold $M$ endowed with a metric connection $D$ with skew-symmetric torsion. These structures are defined by means of the connection $D$ and four (Kähler) complex structures on the fibres of this bundle. Their integrability conditions are interpreted in terms of Weyl geometry and this is used to supply examples satisfying the conditions.
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…
We describe complex twistor spaces over inner 3-symmetric spaces $G/H$, such that $H$ acts transitively on the fibre. Like in the symmetric case, these are flag manifolds $G/K$ where $K$ is the centralizer of a torus in $G$. Moreover, they carry an almost complex structure defined using the horizontal distribution of the normal connection on $G/H$, that coincides with the complex structure associated to a parabolic subgroup $P \subset G^{\mathbb C}$ if it is integrable. Conversely, starting from a complex flag manifold $G^{\mathbb C}/P$, there exists a natural fibration with complex fibres on …
We construct examples of singular self-dual Zollfrei metrics explicitly, by patching a pair of Petean's self-dual split-signature metrics. We prove that there is a natural one-to-one correspondence between these singular metrics and a certain set of embeddings of $RP^3$ to $CP^3$ which has one singular point. This embedding corresponds to an odd function on $R$ that is rapidly decreasing and pure imaginary valued. The one-to-one correspondence is explicitly given by using the Radon transform.
An order four automorphism of a Lie algebra gives rise to an integrable system discussed by Terng. We show that solutions of this system may be identified with certain vertically harmonic twistor lifts of conformal maps of surfaces in a Riemannian symmetric space. Specialising to 4-dimensional target, we find that surfaces with holomorphic mean curvature in 4-dimensional spaces with constant sectional or holomorphic sectional curvatures constitute an integrable system as do Hamiltonian stationary Lagrangian surfaces in a 4-dimensional Hermitian symmetric space (this last being a result of Hele…
A hyperkähler manifold $M$ has a family of induced complex structures indexed by a two-dimensional sphere $S^2 \cong \mathbb{CP}^1$. The twistor space of $M$ is a complex manifold $Tw(M)$ together with a natural holomorphic projection $Tw(M) \to \mathbb{CP}^1$, whose fiber over each point of $\mathbb{CP}^1$ is a copy of $M$ with the corresponding induced complex structure. We remove one point from this sphere (corresponding to one fiber in the twistor space),and for the case of $M = \mathbb{R}^{4n}$, $n\in\mathbb{N}$, equipped with the standard hyperkähler structure, we construct one quantizat…
A hyperkaehler manifold with a circle action fixing just one complex structure admits a natural a hyperholomorphic line bundle. This forms the basis for the construction of a corresponding quaternionic Kaehler manifold in the work of A.Haydys. We construct in this paper the corresponding holomorphic line bundle on twistor space and compute many examples, including monopole and Higgs bundle moduli spaces. We also show that the bundle on twistor space has a natural meromorphic connection which realizes it as the quantum line bundle for the hyperkaehler family of holomorphic symplectic structures…
We continue to study twistor spaces on the connected sum of four complex projective planes, whose anticanonical map is of degree two over the image. In particular, we determine the defining equation of the branch divisor of the anticanonical map in an explicit form. Together with previous two articles (arXiv:1009.3153 and arXiv:0705.0060), this completes explicit description of all such twistor spaces.
In recent papers math.DG/0701278 and arXiv:0705.0060, we gave explicit description of some new Moishezon twistor spaces. In this paper, developing the method in the papers much further, we explicitly give projective models of a number of new Moishezon twistor spaces, as conic bundles over some rational surfaces (called minitwistor spaces). These include the twistor spaces studied in the papers as very special cases. Our source of the result is a series of self-dual metrics with torus action constructed by D. Joyce. Actually, for arbitrary Joyce metrics and U(1)-subgroups of the torus which fix…
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…
The twistor space \Z of an oriented Riemannian 4-manifold M admits a natural 1-parameter family of Riemannian metrics h_t compatible with the almost complex structures J_1 and J_2 introduced, respectively, by Atiyah, Hitchin and Singer, and Eells and Salamon. In this paper we compute the first Chern form of the almost Hermitian manifold (\Z,h_t,J_n), n=1,2 and find the geometric conditions on M under which the curvature of its Chern connection D^n is of type (1,1). We also describe the twistor spaces of constant holomorphic sectional curvature with respect to D^n and show that the Nijenhuis te…
Classifying Slice-Regular Polynomials via Group Actions on the Twistor Space
Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学）；Institute of Mathematics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院数学研究所）；Warsaw University（华沙大学）；Huzhou Normal University（湖州师范学院）
We study the geometry of the twistor space of the universal hyperkaehler implosion Q for SU(n). Using the description of Q as a hyperkaehler quiver variety, we construct a holomorphic map from the twistor space Z_Q of Q to a complex vector bundle over P^1, and an associated map of Q to the affine space R of the bundle's holomorphic sections. The map from Q to R is shown to be injective and equivariant for the action of SU(n) x T^{n-1} x SU(2). Both maps, from Q and from Z_Q, are described in detail for n=2 and n=3. We explain how the maps are built from the fundamental irreducible representati…
In this paper we classify all Moishezon twistor spaces on 4CP^2. The classification is given in terms of the structure of the anticanonical system of the twistor spaces. We show that the anticanonical map satisfies one of the following three properties: (a) birational over the image, (b) two to one over the image, or (c) the image is two-dimensional. We determine structure of the images for each case in explicit forms. Then we intensively investigate structure of the twistor spaces in the case (b), and determine the defining equation of the branch divisor of the anticanonical map.
We study the local geometry of 4-manifolds equipped with a \emph{para-Kähler-Einstein} (pKE) metric, a special type of split-signature pseudo-Riemannian metric, and their associated \emph{twistor distribution}, a rank 2 distribution on the 5-dimensional total space of the circle bundle of self-dual null 2-planes. For pKE metrics with nonvanishing Einstein constant this twistor distribution has exactly two integral leaves and is `maximally non-integrable' on their complement, a so-called (2,3,5)-distribution. Our main result establishes a simple correspondence between the anti-self-dual Weyl te…
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.
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.
It is very well known that Hopf real hypersurfaces in the complex projective space can be locally characterized as tubes over complex submanifolds. This also holds true for some, but not all, Hopf real hypersurfaces in the complex hyperbolic space. The main goal of this paper is to show, in a unified way, how to construct Hopf real hypersurfaces in the complex hyperbolic space from a horizontal submanifold in one of the three twistor spaces of the indefinite complex $2$-plane Grassmannian with respect to the natural para-quaternionic Kähler structure. We also identify these twistor spaces with…
We prove that given a pseudo-Riemannian conformal structure whose conformal holonomy representation fixes a totally lightlike subspace of arbitrary dimension, there is, wrt. a local metric in the conformal class defined off a singular set, a parallel, totally lightlike distribution on the tangent bundle which contains the image of the Ricci-tensor. This generalizes results obtained for invariant lightlike lines and planes and closes a gap in the understanding of the geometric meaning of reducibly acting conformal holonomy groups. We show how this result naturally applies to the classification …
We introduce in this paper normal twistor equations for differential forms and study their solutions, the so-called normal conformal Killing forms. The twistor equations arise naturally from the canonical normal Cartan connection of conformal geometry. Reductions of its holonomy are related to solutions of the normal twistor equations. The case of decomposable normal conformal holonomy representations is discussed. A typical example with an irreducible holonomy representation are the so-called Fefferman spaces. We also apply our results to describe the geometry of solutions with conformal Kill…
In this paper we investigate a family of Moishezon twistor spaces on the connected sum of 4 complex projective planes, which can be regarded as a direct generalization of the twistor spaces on 3CP^2 of double solid type studied by Poon and Kreussler-Kurke. These twistor spaces have a natural structure of double covering over a scroll of 2-planes over a conic. We determine the defining equations of the branch divisors in an explicit form, which are very similar to the case of 3CP^2. Using these explicit description we compute the dimension of the moduli spaces of these twistor spaces. Also we o…
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 investigate the integrability of natural almost complex structures on the twistor space of an almost para-quaternionic manifold as well as the integrability of natural almost paracomplex structures on the reflector space of an almost para-quaternionic manifold constructed with the help of a para-quaternionic connection. We show that if there is an integrable structure it is independent on the para-quaternionic connection. In dimension four, we express the anti-self-duality condition in terms of the Riemannian Ricci forms with respect to the associated para-quaternionic structure.
Motivated by black hole physics in N=2, D=4 supergravity, we study the geometry of quaternionic-Kahler manifolds M obtained by the c-map construction from projective special Kahler manifolds M_s. Improving on earlier treatments, we compute the Kahler potentials on the twistor space Z and Swann space S in the complex coordinates adapted to the Heisenberg symmetries. The results bear a simple relation to the Hesse potential Σof the special Kahler manifold M_s, and hence to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for BPS black holes. We explicitly construct the ``covariant c-map'' and the ``twistor map'',…
We give an explicit description of rational curves in the product of three copies of complex projective lines, which are transformed into twistor lines in M. Nagata's example of non-projective complete algebraic variety, viewed as the twistor space of Eguchi-Hanson metric. In particular, we show that there exist two families of such curves and both of them are parameterized by mutually diffeomorphic, connected real 4-dimensional manifolds. We also give a relationship between these two families through a birational transformation naturally associated to the Nagata's example.
