This paper constructs a family of conformally invariant differential operators acting on spinor densities with leading part a power of the Dirac operator. The construction applies for all powers in odd dimensions, and only for finitely many powers in even dimensions. These operators arise naturally as obstructions to formal solution of the Dirac equation on the Fefferman-Graham ambient space with prescribed boundary conditions.
In this paper we present a summarizing description of the connection between Dirac operators on conformally flat manifolds and automorphic forms based on a series of joint work with John Ryan over the last fifteen years. We also outline applications to boundary value problems.
We introduce the notion of formally self-adjoint conformally covariant polydifferential operators and give some constructions of families of such operators. In one direction, we show that any homogeneous conformally variational scalar Riemannian invariant (CVI) induces one of these operators. In another direction, we use the ambient metric to give alternative constructions of certain operators produced this way, one of which is a formally self-adjoint, fourth-order, conformally covariant tridifferential operator which should be regarded as the simplest fully nonlinear analogue of the Paneitz o…
In this paper we present an explicit construction for the fundamental solution to the Dirac and Laplace operator on some non-orientable conformally flat manifolds. We first treat a class of projective cylinders and tori where we can study monogenic sections with values in different pin bundles. Then we discuss the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle and higher dimensional generalizations of them. We present integral representation formulas together with some elementary tools of harmonic analysis on these manifolds.
We study boundary regularity for conformally compact Einstein metrics in even dimensions by generalizing the ideas of Michael Anderson. Our method of approach is to view the vanishing of the Ambient Obstruction tensor as an nth order system of equations for the components of a compactification of the given metric. This, together with boundary conditions that the compactification is shown to satisfy provide enough information to apply classical boundary regularity results. These results then provide local and global versions of finite boundary regularity for the components of the compactificati…
We give explicit formulas for all odd order differential intertwinors on the subbundle of the bundle of spinor-$k$-forms that are annihilated by the Clifford multiplication over the odd dimensional standard sphere. The Dirac and Rarita-Schwinger operators appear in the case of $k=0$ and $k=1$, respectively.
We provide an explicit formula for the Fefferman-Graham-ambient metric of an $n$-dimensional conformal $pp$-wave in those cases where it exists. In even dimensions we calculate the obstruction explicitly. Furthermore, we describe all 4-dimensional $pp$-waves that are Bach-flat, and give a large class of Bach-flat examples which are conformally Cotton-flat, but not conformally Einstein. Finally, as an application, we use the obtained ambient metric to show that even-dimensional $pp$-waves have vanishing critical $Q$-curvature.
We give results about the L^2 kernel and the spectrum of the Dirac operator on a complete Riemannian manifold which is conformally equivalent to the interior of a Riemannian manifold with nonempty boundary.
We prove the Hijazi inequality, an estimate for Dirac eigenvalues, for complete manifolds of finite volume. Under some additional assumptions on the dimension and the scalar curvature, this inequality is also valid for elements of the essential spectrum. This allows to prove the conformal version of the Hijazi inequality on conformally parabolic manifolds if the spin analog to the Yamabe invariant is positive.
Representations of Dirac-Hestenes and Dirac spinor fields via coordinates of surfaces conformally immersed into 4-dimensional complex space are proposed. A relation between time evolution of spinor fields and integrable deformations of surfaces is discussed.
In this paper we study Clifford and harmonic analysis on some conformal flat spin manifolds. In particular we treat manifolds that can be parametrized by $U / Γ$ where $U$ is a simply connected subdomain of either $S^{n}$ or $R^{n}$ and $Γ$ is a Kleinian group acting discontinuously on $U$. Examples of such manifolds treated here include for example $RP^{n}$ and $S^{1}\times S^{n-1}$. Special kinds of Clifford-analytic automorphic forms associated to the different choices of $Γ$ are used to construct Cauchy kernels, Cauchy Integral formulas, Green's kernels and formulas together with Hardy spa…
We give a geometric derivation of Branson's Q-curvature in terms of the ambient metric associated with conformal structures; it naturally follows from the ambient metric construction of conformally invariant operators and can be applied to a large class of invariant operators. This procedure can be also applied to CR geometry and gives a CR analog of the Q-curvature; it then turns out that the Q-curvature gives the coefficient of the logarithmic singularity of the Szego kernel of 3-dimensional CR manifolds.
We describe an elementary algorithm for expressing, as explicit formulae in tractor calculus, the conformally invariant GJMS operators due to C.R. Graham et alia. These differential operators have leading part a power of the Laplacian. Conformal tractor calculus is the natural induced bundle calculus associated to the conformal Cartan connection. Applications discussed include standard formulae for these operators in terms of the Levi-Civita connection and its curvature and a direct definition and formula for T. Branson's so-called Q-curvature (which integrates to a global conformal invariant)…
The well known conformal covariance of the Dirac operator acting on spinor fields over a semi Riemannian spin manifold does not extend to powers thereof in general. For odd powers one has to add lower order curvature correction terms in order to obtain conformal covariance. We derive an algorithmic construction in terms of associated tractor bundles to compute these correction terms. Depending on the signature of the semi Riemannian manifold in question, the obtained conformal powers of the Dirac operator turn out to be formally self-adjoint with respect to the $L^2-$scalar product, or formall…
Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension >2. We show that there is a metric h conformal to g and of volume 1 such that the first positive eigenvalue the conformal Laplacian with repect to h is arbitrarily large. A similar statement is proven for the first positive eigenvalue of the Dirac operator on a spin manifold of dimension >1.
The (Fefferman-Graham) ambient obstruction tensor is a conformally invariant symmetric trace-free 2-tensor on even-dimensional Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. The conformal deformation complex is a differential complex related to infinitesimal deformations of conformal structure. We construct a conformally invariant differential operator on algebraic Weyl tensors that gives special curved analogues of certain operators related to the deformation complex and that, upon application to the Weyl curvature, yields the obstruction tensor. This new definition of the obstruction tensor lea…
We give a complete classification of tangential bidifferential operators of total order at most $n$ which are expressed purely in terms of the Laplacian on the ambient space of an $n$-dimensional manifold. This gives a curved analogue of the classification, due to Ovsienko--Redou and Clerc, of conformally invariant bidifferential operators on the sphere. As an application, we construct a large class of formally self-adjoint conformally invariant differential operators.
In this note, we prove lower and upper bounds for Dirac operators of submanifolds in certain ambient manifolds in terms of conformal and extrinsic quantities.
We construct a series of conformally invariant differential operators acting on weighted trace-free symmetric 2-tensors by a method similar to Graham-Jenne-Mason-Sparling's. For compact conformal manifolds of dimension even and greater than or equal to four with vanishing ambient obstruction tensor, one of these operators is used to describe the second variation of the total Q-curvature. An explicit formula for conformally Einstein manifolds is given in terms of the Lichnerowicz Laplacian of an Einstein representative metric.
This is the second in a series of papers where we prove a conjecture of Deser and Schwimmer regarding the algebraic structure of ``global conformal invariants''; these are defined to be conformally invariant integrals of geometric scalars. The conjecture asserts that the integrand of any such integral can be expressed as a linear combination of a local conformal invariant, a divergence and of the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet integrand. The present paper addresses the hardest challenge in this series: It shows how to {\it separate} the local conformal invariant from the divergence term in the integrand; …
Fundamental solutions of Dirac type operators are introduced for a class of conformally flat manifolds. This class consists of manifolds obtained by factoring out the upper half-space of $\mathbb{R}^n$ by arithmetic subgroups of generalized modular groups. Basic properties of these fundamental solutions are presented together with associated Eisenstein and Poincaré type series.
We look at several problems in even dimensional conformal geometry based around the de Rham complex. A leading and motivating problem is to find a conformally invariant replacement for the usual de Rham harmonics. An obviously related problem is to find, for each order of differential form bundle, a ``gauge'' operator which completes the exterior derivative to a system which is both elliptically coercive and conformally invariant. Treating these issues involves constructing a family of new operators which, on the one hand, generalise Branson's celebrated Q-curvature and, on the other hand, com…
There is a certain family of conformally invariant first order elliptic operators on Riemannian spin manifold which include Dirac operator as its first and simplest member. Their general definition is given and their basic properties are described. A special attention is paid to the Rarita-Schwinger operator the second simplest operator in the row. Its basic properties are described in more details. In the last part indices of discussed operators are computed.
We construct polynomial conformal invariants, the vanishing of which is necessary and sufficient for an $n$-dimensional suitably generic (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold to be conformal to an Einstein manifold. We also construct invariants which give necessary and sufficient conditions for a metric to be conformally related to a metric with vanishing Cotton tensor. One set of invariants we derive generalises the set of invariants in dimension four obtained by Kozameh, Newman and Tod. For the conformally Einstein problem, another set of invariants we construct gives necessary and sufficient conditi…
This work takes place over a conformally flat spin manifold (M,g). We prove existence and uniqueness of the conformally equivariant quantization valued in spinor differential operators, and provide an explicit formula for it when restricted to first order operators. The Poisson algebra of symbols is realized as a space of functions on the supercotangent bundle, endowed with a symplectic form depending on the metric g. It admits two different actions of the conformal Lie algebra, one tensorial and one Hamiltonian. They are intertwined by the uniquely defined conformally equivariant superization…
We consider a generalized APS boundary problem for a G-invariant Dirac-type operator, which is not of product type near the boundary. We establish a delocalized version (a so-called Kirillov formula) of the equivariant index theorem for this operator. We obtain more explicit formulas for different geometric Dirac-type operators. In particular, we get a formula for the equivariant signature of a local system over a manifold with boundary. In case of a trivial local system, our formula can be viewed as a new way to compute the infinitesimal equivariant eta-invariant of S. Goette. We explicitly c…
On conformal manifolds of even dimension $n\geq 4$ we construct a family of new conformally invariant differential complexes. Each bundle in each of these complexes appears either in the de Rham complex or in its dual. Each of the new complexes is elliptic if the signature is Riemannian. We also construct gauge companion operators which complete the exterior derivative to a conformally invariant and (in the case of Riemannian signature) elliptically coercive system. These (operator,gauge) pairs are used to define finite dimensional conformally stable form subspaces which are are candidates for…
We obtain a vanishing theorem for the half-kernel of a transverse ${\rm Spin}\sp c$ Dirac operator on a compact manifold endowed with a transversely almost complex Riemannian foliation twisted by a sufficiently large power of a line bundle, whose curvature vanishes along the leaves and is transversely non-degenerate at any point of the ambient manifold.
For a Dirac operator $D_{\bar{g}}$ over a spin compact Riemannian manifold with boundary $(\bar{X},\bar{g})$, we give a natural construction of the Calderón projector and of the associated Bergman projector on the space of harmonic spinors on $\bar{X}$, and we analyze their Schwartz kernels. Our approach is based on the conformal covariance of $D_{\bar{g}}$ and the scattering theory for the Dirac operator associated to the complete conformal metric $g=\bar{g}/ρ^2$ where $ρ$ is a smooth function on $\bar{X}$ which equals the distance to the boundary near $\partial\bar{X}$. We show that $({\rm I…
We prove a new upper bound for the first eigenvalue of the Dirac operator of a compact hypersurface in any Riemannian spin manifold carrying a non-trivial twistor spinor without zeros on the hypersurface. The upper bound is expressed as the first eigenvalue of a drifting Schrödinger operator on the hypersurface. Moreover, using a recent approach developed by O. Hijazi and S. Montiel, we completely characterize the equality case when the ambient manifold is the standard hyperbolic space.
We study conformal $Spin$-subgeometry of submanifolds in a semi-Riemannian $Spin$-manifold, focusing on conformal $Spin$-manifolds $(M,[h])$ and their Poincaré-Einstein metrics $(X,g_+)$. Our approach is based on the spectral theory of Dirac operator in the ambient $Spin$-manifold, and associated spinor valued meromorphic family of distributions with residues given by the residue family operators $\slashed{D}_N^{res}(h;λ)$ on spinors. We develop basic aspects and properties of $\slashed{D}_N^{res}(h;λ)$ including conformal covariance, factorization properties by conformally covariant operators…
The conformal powers of the Laplacian of a Riemannian metric which are known as the GJMS-operators admit a combinatorial description in terms of the Taylor coefficients of a natural second-order one-parameter family $\H(r;g)$ of self-adjoint elliptic differential operators. $\H(r;g)$ is a non-Laplace-type perturbation of the conformal Laplacian $P_2(g) = \H(0;g)$. It is defined in terms of the metric $g$ and covariant derivatives of the curvature of $g$. We study the heat kernel coefficients $a_{2k}(r;g)$ of $\H(r;g)$ on closed manifolds. We prove general structural results for the heat kernel…
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 show that, in round spheres of dimension $n\geq3$, for any given collection of codimension 2 smooth submanifolds $\mathfrak{S}:=\{Σ_1,...,Σ_N\}$ of arbitrarily complicated topology ($N$ being the complex dimension of the spinor bundle), there is always an eigenfunction $ψ=(ψ_1,...,ψ_N)$ of the Dirac operator such that each submanifold $Σ_a$, modulo ambient diffeomorphism, is a structurally stable nodal set of the spinor component $ψ_a$. The result holds for any choice of trivialization of the spinor bundle. The emergence of these structures takes place at small scales and sufficiently high …
With respect to the Dirac operator and the conformally invariant Laplacian, an explicit description of the inverse Penrose transform on Riemannian twistor spaces is given. A Dolbeault representative of cohomology on the twistor space is constructed from a solution of the field equation on the base manifold.
Higher order higher spin operators are generalizations of $kth$-powers of the Dirac operator. In this paper, we study higher order higher spin operators defined on some conformally flat manifolds, namely cylinders and Hopf manifolds. We will also construct the kernels of these operators on these manifolds.
We show how to assign to any immersed torus in $\R^3$ or $S^3$ a Riemann surface such that the immersion is described by functions defined on this surface. We call this surface the spectrum or the spectral curve of the torus. The spectrum contains important information about conformally invariant properties of the torus and, in particular, relates to the Willmore functional. We propose a simple proof that for isothermic tori in $\R^3$ (this class includes constant mean curvature tori and tori of revolution) the spectrum is invariant with respect to conformal transformations of $\R^3$. We show …
This paper goes some way in explaining how to construct an integrable hierarchy of flows on the space of conformally immersed tori in n-space. These flows have first occured in mathematical physics -- the Novikov-Veselov and Davey-Stewartson hierarchies -- as kernel dimension preserving deformations of the Dirac operator. Later, using spinorial representations of surfaces, the same flows were interpreted as deformations of surfaces in 3- and 4-space preserving the Willmore energy. This last property suggest that the correct geometric setting for this theory is Moebius invariant surface geometr…
Green functions play an important role in conformal geometry. In this paper, we explain how to compute explicitly the logarithmic singularities of the Green functions of the conformal powers of the Laplacian. These operators include the Yamabe and Paneitz operators, as well as the conformal fractional powers of the Laplacian arising from scattering theory for Poincaré-Einstein metrics. The results are formulated in terms of Weyl conformal invariants arising from the ambient metric of Fefferman-Graham. As applications we obtain "Green function" characterizations of locally conformally flat mani…
It is postulated that quantum gravity is a sum over causal structures coupled to matter via scale evolution. Quantized causal structures can be described by studying simple matrix models where matrices are replaced by an algebra of quantum mechanical observables. In particular, previous studies constructed quantum gravity models by quantizing the moduli of Laplace, weight and defining-function operators on Fefferman-Graham ambient spaces. The algebra of these operators underlies conformal geometries. We extend those results to include fermions by taking an osp(1|2) "Dirac square root" of these…
This paper studies a particular class of higher order conformally invariant dif- ferential operators and related integral operators acting on functions taking values in particular finite dimensional irreducible representations of the Spin group. The differential operators can be seen as a generalization to higher spin spaces of kth- powers of the Euclidean Dirac operator. To construct these operators, we use the framework of higher spin theory in Clifford analysis, in which irreducible represen- tations of the Spin group are realized as polynomial spaces satisfying a particular system of diffe…
