This paper describes the connection between scattering matrices on conformally compact asymptotically Einstein manifolds and conformally invariant objects on their boundaries at infinity. The conformally invariant powers of the Laplacian arise as residues of the scattering matrix and Branson's Q-curvature in even dimensions as a limiting value. The integrated Q-curvature is shown to equal a multiple of the coefficient of the logarithmic term in the renormalized volume expansion.
We study the conformal geometry of timelike curves in the (1+2)-Einstein universe, the conformal compactification of Minkowski 3-space defined as the quotient of the null cone of $\mathbb{R}^{2,3}$ by the action by positive scalar multiplications. The purpose is to describe local and global conformal invariants of timelike curves and to address the question of existence and properties of closed trajectories for the conformal strain functional. Some relations between the conformal geometry of timelike curves and the geometry of knots and links in the 3-sphere are discussed.
We study when the Jacobi operator associated to the Weyl conformal curvature tensor has constant eigenvalues on the bundle of unit spacelike or timelike tangent vectors. This leads to questions in the conformal geometry of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds which generalize the Osserman conjecture to this setting. We also study similar questions related to the skew-symmetric curvature operator defined by the Weyl conformal curvature tensor.
We study the spectral geometry of the conformal Jacobi operator on a 4-dimensional Riemannian manifold (M,g). We show that (M,g) is conformally Osserman if and only if (M,g) is self-dual or anti self-dual. Equivalently, this means that the curvature tensor of (M,g) is given by a quaternionic structure, at least pointwise.
We establish, via geometric quantization of the supercotangent bundle sM of (M,g), a correspondence between its conformal geometry and those of the spinor bundle. In particular, the Kosmann Lie derivative of spinors is obtained by quantization of the comoment map, associated to the new Hamiltonian action of conf(M,g) on sM. We study then the conf(M,g)-module structures induced on the space of differential operators acting on spinor densities and on its spaces of symbols (functions on sM). In the conformally flat case, we classify their conformal invariants, including the conformally odd powers…
We present a novel approach to the classification of conformally equivariant differential operators on spinors in the case of homogeneous conformal geometry. It is based on the classification of solutions for a vector-valued system of partial differential equations, associated to $\mathcal{D}$-modules for the homogeneous conformal structure and controlled by the spin Howe duality for the orthogonal Lie algebras.
The following are expanded lecture notes for the course of eight one hour lectures given by the second author at the 2014 summer school Asymptotic Analysis in General Relativity held in Grenoble by the Institut Fourier. The first four lectures deal with conformal geometry and the conformal tractor calculus, taking as primary motivation the search for conformally invariant tensors and diffrerential operators. The final four lectures apply the conformal tractor calculus to the study of conformally compactified geometries, motivated by the conformal treatment of infinity in general relativity.
The aim of this paper is to develop on the 1-jet space J^1(R, M^n) the Finsler-like geometry (in the sense of distinguished (d-) connection, d-torsions, d-curvatures and some gravitational-like and electromagnetic-like geometrical models) attached to the (t,x)-conformal deformation of the Berwald-Moor metric.
This paper is part of a series of articles on noncommutative geometry and conformal geometry. In this paper, we reformulate the local index formula in conformal geometry in such a way to take into account of the action of conformal diffeomorphisms. We also construct and compute a whole new family of geometric conformal invariants associated with conformal diffeomorphisms. This includes conformal invariants associated with equivariant characteristic classes. The approach of this paper involves using various tools from noncommutative geometry, such as twisted spectral triples and cyclic theory. …
Motivated by considerations of euclidean quantum gravity, we investigate a central question of spectral geometry, namely the question of reconstructability of compact Riemannian manifolds from the spectra of their Laplace operators. To this end, we study analytic paths of metrics that induce isospectral Laplace-Beltrami operators over oriented compact surfaces without boundary. Applying perturbation theory, we show that sets of conformally equivalent metrics on such surfaces contain no nontrivial convex subsets. This indicates that cases where the manifolds cannot be reconstructed from their s…
We develop the scattering theory of general conformally compact metrics. For low frequencies, the domain of the scattering matrix is shown to be frequency dependent. In particular, generalized eigenfunctions exhibit L^2 decay in directions where the asymptotic curvature is sufficiently negative. The scattering matrix is shown to be a pseudodifferential operator. For generic frequency in this part of the continuous spectrum, we give an explicit construction of the resolvent kernel.
We use the CR geometry of the standard hyperquadric in complex projective three-space to give a detailed twistor description of conformal foliations in Euclidean three-space.
In this note, we study the connection between the fractional Laplacian operator that appeared in the recent work of Caffarelli-Silvestre and a class of conformally covariant operators in conformal geometry.
Jet isomorphism theorems for conformal geometry are discussed. A new proof of the jet isomorphism theorem for odd-dimensional conformal geometry is outlined, using an ambient realization of the conformal deformation complex. An infinite order ambient lift for conformal densities in the case in which harmonic extension is obstructed is described. A jet isomorphism theorem for even dimensional conformal geometry is formulated using the inhomogeneous ambient metrics recently introduced by the author and K. Hirachi.
A conformal structure on a manifold $M^n$ induces natural second order conformally invariant operators, called Möbius and Laplace structures, acting on specific weight bundles of $M$, provided that $n\ge 3$. By extending the notions of Möbius and Laplace structures to the case of surfaces and curves, we develop here the theory of extrinsic conformal geometry for submanifolds, find tensorial invariants of a conformal embedding, and use these invariants to characterize various forms of geodesic submanifolds.
BGG-operators form sequences of invariant differential operators and the first of these is overdetermined. Interesting equations in conformal geometry described by these operators are those for Einstein scales, conformal Killing forms and conformal Killing tensors. We present a deformation procedure of the tractor connection which yields an invariant prolongation of the first operator. The explicit calculation is presented in the case of conformal Killing forms.
We give a new characterisation of the unparametrised geodesics, or distinguished curves, for affine, pseudo-Riemannian, conformal, and projective geometry. This is a type of moving incidence relation. The characterisation is used to provide a very general theory and construction of quantities that are necessarily conserved along the curves. The formalism immediately yields explicit formulae for these curve first integrals. The usual role of Killing tensors and conformal Killing tensors is recovered as a special case, but the construction shows that a significantly larger class of equation solu…
Physical reasons suggested in \cite{Ha-Ha} for the \emph{Quantum Gravity Problem} lead us to study \emph{type-changing metrics} on a manifold. The most interesting cases are \emph{Transverse Riemann-Lorentz Manifolds}. Here we study the conformal geometry of such manifolds.
The conformal geometry of the Schwarzian Davey-Stewartson II hierarchy and its discrete analogue is investigated. Connections with discrete and continuous isothermic surfaces and generalised Clifford configurations are recorded. An interpretation of the Schwarzian Davey-Stewartson II flows as integrable deformations of conformally immersed surfaces is given.
The aim of the present paper is to investigate conformal changes in absolute parallelism geometry. We find out some new conformal invariants in terms of the Weitzenböck connection and the Levi-Civita connection of an absolute parallelism space.
We derive a class of variational functionals which arise naturally in conformal geometry. In the special case when the Riemannian manifold is locally conformal flat, the functional coincides with the well studied functional which is the integration over the manifold of the k-symmetric function of the Schouten tensor of the metric on the manifold.
The aim of this paper is to report on recent development on the conformal fractional Laplacian, both from the analytic and geometric points of view, but especially towards the PDE community.
Suppose $M$ is a compact Riemannian manifold and $p\in M$ an arbitrary point. We employ estimates on the volume growth around $p$ to prove that the only conformal compactification of $M\setminus\{p\}$ is $M$ itself.
Tractor Calculus is a powerful tool for analyzing Weyl invariance; although fundamentally linked to the Cartan connection, it may also be arrived at geometrically by viewing a conformal manifold as the space of null rays in a Lorentzian ambient space. For dimension d conformally flat manifolds we show that the (d+2)-dimensional Fefferman--Graham ambient space corresponds to the momentum space of a massless scalar field. Hence on the one hand the null cone parameterizes physical momentum excitations, while on the other hand, null rays correspond to points in the underlying conformal manifold. T…
In this paper we make a detailed and self-contained study of the conformalGauss map. Then, starting from the seminal work of R. Bryant and the notion of conformal Gauss map, we recover many fundamental properties of Willmore surfaces. We also get new results like some characterizations of minimal and constant meancurvature (CMC) surfaces in term of their conformal Gauss map behavior.
This paper is the the third part of a series of paper whose aim is to use of the framework of \emph{twisted spectral triples} to study conformal geometry from a noncommutive geometric viewpoint. In this paper we reformulate the inequality of Vafa-Witten \cite{VW:CMP84} in the setting of twisted spectral triples. This involves a notion of Poincaré duality for twisted spectral triples. Our main results have various consequences. In particular, we obtain a version in conformal geometry of the original inequality of Vafa-Witten, in the sense of an explicit control of the Vafa-Witten bound under co…
In Part I, we develop the notions of a Moebius structure and a conformal Cartan geometry, establish an equivalence between them; we use them in Part II to study submanifolds of conformal manifolds in arbitrary dimension and codimension. We obtain Gauss-Codazzi-Ricci equations and a conformal Bonnet theorem characterizing immersed submanifolds of the conformal n-sphere. These methods are applied in Part III to study constrained Willmore surfaces, isothermic surfaces, Guichard surfaces and conformally-flat submanifolds with flat normal bundle, and their spectral deformations, in arbitrary codime…
On a Finsler manifold $(M,L)$, we consider the change $L\longrightarrow\bar{L}(x,y)=e^{σ(x)}L(x,y)+β(x,y)$, which we call a $β$-conformal change. This change generalizes various types of changes in Finsler geometry: conformal, $C$-conformal, $h$-conformal, Randers and generalized Randers changes. Under this change, we obtain an explicit expression relating the Cartan connection associated to $(M,L)$ and the transformed Cartan connection associated to $(M,\bar{L})$. We also express some of the fundamental geometric objects (canonical spray, nonlinear connection, torsion tensors, ...etc.) of $(M…
The problem of characterizing conformally Einstein manifolds by tensorial conditions has been tackled recently in papers by M. Listing, and in work by A. R. Gover and P. Nurowski. Their results apply to metrics satisfying a "non-degeneracy" condition on the Weyl tensor \W. We investigate the geometry of the foliations arising on conformally Einstein spaces (with Riemannian signature) where this condition fails, which then allows us to characterize a general class of locally conformally Einstein Riemannian manifolds with degenerate Weyl tensor.
This article serves as errata of the book "Energy of knots and conformal geometry", Series on Knots and Everything Vol. 33, World Scientific, Singapore, 304 pages, (2003). (ver. 27/05/2007)
In the study of conformal geometry, the method of elliptic partial differential equations is playing an increasingly significant role. Since the solution of the Yamabe problem, a family of conformally covariant operators (for definition, see section 2) generalizing the conformal Laplacian, and their associated conformal invariants have been introduced. The conformally covariant powers of the Laplacian form a family $P_{2k}$ with $k \in \mathbb N$ and $k \leq \frac{n}{2}$ if the dimension $n$ is even. Each $P_{2k}$ has leading order term $(- Δ)^k$ and is equal to $ (- Δ) ^k$ if the metric is fl…
We answer to the question whether a system of the 3rd order ODEs describes geodesics of a conformal structure. We construct a functor from a category of conformal geometries to a category of Cartan geometries associated to the 3rd order ODEs systems. Explicit formulas which define the family of all equations on conformal geodesics are given in the last section of the article.
In this article we introduce local gauge conditions under which many curvature tensors appearing in conformal geometry, such as the Weyl, Cotton, Bach, and Fefferman-Graham obstruction tensors, become elliptic operators. The gauge conditions amount to fixing an $n$-harmonic coordinate system and normalizing the determinant of the metric. We also give corresponding elliptic regularity results and characterizations of local conformal flatness in low regularity settings.
In the lecture notes, the author will survey the development of conformal geometry on four dimensional manifolds. The topic she chooses is one on which she has been involved in the past twenty or more years: the study of the integral conformal invariants on 4-manifolds and geometric applications. The development was heavily influenced by many earlier pioneer works; recent progress in conformal geometry has also been made in many different directions, here we will only present some slices of the development.
Let $\mathbb{Q}_3$ be the complex 3-quadric endowed with its standard complex conformal structure. We study the complex conformal geometry of isotropic curves in $\mathbb{Q}_3$. By an isotropic curve we mean a nonconstant holomorphic map from a Riemann surface into $\mathbb{Q}_3$, null with respect to the conformal structure of $\mathbb{Q}_3$. The relations between isotropic curves and a number of relevant classes of surfaces in Riemannian and Lorentzian spaceforms are discussed.
An intrinsic definition in terms of conformal capacity is proposed for the conformal type of a Carnot--Carathéodory space (parabolic or hyperbolic). Geometric criteria of conformal type are presented. They are closely related to the asymptotic geometry of the space at infinity and expressed in terms of the isoperimetric function and the growth of the area of geodesic spheres. In particular, it is proved that a sub-Riemannian manifold admits a conformal change of metric that makes it into a complete manifold of finite volume if and only if the manifold is of conformally parabolic type. Further …
In this paper, we study the geometry of pointwise semi-slant warped products in a locally conformal Kaehler manifold. In particular, we obtain several results which extend Chen's inequality for CR-warped product submanifolds in Kaehler manifolds. Also, we study the corresponding equality cases. Several related results on pointwise semi-slant warped products are also proved in this paper.
The goal of this note is to give an introduction to locally conformally symplectic and Kähler geometry. In particular, Sections 1 and 3 aim to provide the reader with enough mathematical background to appreciate this kind of geometry. The reference book for locally conformally Kähler geometry is "Locally conformal Kähler Geometry" by Sorin Dragomir and Liviu Ornea. Many progresses in this field, however, were accomplished after the publication of this book, hence are not contained there. On the other hand, there is no book on locally conformally symplectic geometry and many recent advances lie…
For a finite reflection subgroup $G\leq O(n+1,1,\mR)$ of the conformal group of the sphere with standard conformal structure $(S^n,[g_0])$, we geometrically derive differential-difference Dunkl version of the series of conformally invariant differential operators with symbols given by powers of Laplace operator. The construction can be regarded as a deformation of the Fefferman-Graham ambient metric construction of GJMS operators.
A theorem of Lawson and Simons states that the only stable minimal submanifolds in complex projective spaces are complex submanifolds. We generalize their result to the cases of quaternionic and octonionic projective spaces. Our approach gives a unified viewpoint towards conformal and projective geometries.
On a manifold with boundary, we deform the metric conformally. This induces a deformation of the Schouten tensor. We fix the metric at the boundary and realize a prescribed value for the product of the eigenvalues of the Schouten tensor in the interior, provided that there exists a subsolution.
We consider locally conformal Kaehler geometry as an equivariant, homothetic Kaehler geometry (K,Γ). We show that the de Rham class of the Lee form can be naturally identified with the homomorphism projecting Γto its dilation factors, thus completing the description of locally conformal Kaehler geometry in this equivariant setting. The rank r of a locally conformal Kaehler manifold is the rank of the image of this homomorphism. Using algebraic number theory, we show that r is non-trivial, providing explicit examples of locally conformal Kaehler manifolds with 1<r<b_1. As far as we know, these …
By Liouville's theorem, in dimensions 3 or more conformal transformations form a finite-dimensional group, an apparent drastic departure from the 2-dimensional case. We propose a derived enhancement of the conformal Lie algebra which is an infinite-dimensional dg-Lie algebra incorporating not only symmetries but also deformations of the conformal structure. Our approach is based on (derived) deformation theory of the ambitwistor space of complex null-geodesics.
We study inverse scattering for $Δ_g+V$ on $(X,g)$ a conformally compact manifold with metric $g,$ with variable sectional curvature $-\alf^2(y)$ at the boundary and $V\in C^\infty(X)$ not vanishing at the boundary. We prove that the scattering matrix at a fixed energies $(λ_1,$ $λ_2)$ in a suitable subset of $\mc$, determines $\alf,$ and the Taylor series of both the potential and the metric at the boundary.
In this paper we consider Yamabe type problem for higher order curvatures on manifolds with totally geodesic boundaries. We prove local gradient and second derivative estimates for solutions to the fully nonlinear elliptic equations associated with the problems.
Akyol M.A. [Conformal anti-invariant submersions from cosymplectic manifolds, Hacettepe Journal of Mathematics and Statistic, 46(2), (2017), 177-192.] defined and studied conformal anti-invariant submersions from cosymplectic manifolds. The aim of the present paper is to define and study the notion of conformal slant submersions (it means the Reeb vector field $ξ$ is a vertical vector field) from almost contact metric manifolds onto Riemannian manifolds as a generalization of Riemannian submersions, horizontally conformal submersions, slant submersions and conformal anti-invariant submersions.…
In this paper, close surfaces are considered in 3-dimensional harmonic conformally flat space in point of the variation. It is shown that if the conformal vector field be tangent to surface and the sign of the mean curvature does not change then surface is minimal. Also, it is determined that the critical point of mean curvature functional is homeomorphic to the sphere. Furthermore, the Euler-Lagrange equations associated to the mean curvature and Willmore functionals are determined.
Conformally Kähler, Einstein-Maxwell metrics and $f$-extremal metrics are generalization of canonical metrics in Kähler geometry. We introduce uniform K-stability for toric Kähler manifolds, and show that uniform K-stability is necessary condition for the existence of $f$-extremal metrics on toric manifolds. Furthermore, we show that uniform K-stability is equivalent to properness of relative K-energy.
This is the second in a series of papers on natural modification of the normal tractor connection in a parabolic geometry, which naturally prolongs an underlying overdetermined system of invariant differential equations. We give a short review of the general procedure developed in [5] and then compute the prolongation covariant derivatives for a number of interesting examples in projective, conformal and Grassmannian geometries.
We study the existence of a metric with zero scalar curvature maximizing the isoperimetric ratio among all zero scalar curvature metrics in a fixed conformal class of metrics on a compact manifold with boundary. The question may be reduced to an extremal problem for the harmonic extension of functions and the related nonlinear integral equation is discussed.
This paper is a survey on special geometric structures that admit conformal Killing spinors based on lectures, given at the ``Workshop on Special Geometric Structures in String Theory'', Bonn, September 2001 and at ESI, Wien, November 2001. We discuss the case of Lorentzian signature and explain which geometries occur up to dimension 6.
BGG-equations are geometric overdetermined systems of PDEs on parabolic geometries. Normal solutions of BGG-equations are particularly interesting and we give a simple formula for the necessary and sufficient additional integrability conditions on a solution. We then discuss a procedure for coupling known solutions of BGG-equations to produce new ones. Employing a suitable calculus for conformal spin structures this yields explicit coupling formulas and conditions between almost Einstein scales, conformal Killing forms and twistor spinors. Finally we discuss a class of generic twistor spinors …
