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.
Starting from a real analytic conformal Cartan connection on a real analytic surface $S$, we construct a complex surface $T$ containing a family of pairs of projective lines. Using the structure on $S$ we also construct a complex $3$-space $Z$, such that $Z$ is a twistor space of a self-dual conformal $4$-fold and $T$ is a quotient of $Z$ by a holomorphic local $\mathbb{C}^*$ action. We prove that $T$ is a minitwistor space of an asymptotically hyperbolic Einstein-Weyl space with $S$ as an asymptotic boundary.
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 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 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.
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.
We explicitly describe all SO(7)-invariant almost quaternion-Hermitian structures on the twistor space of the six sphere and determine the types of their intrinsic torsion.
In this paper we determine the Gray-Hervella classes of the compatible almost complex structures on the twistor spaces of oriented Riemannian four-manifolds considered by G. Deschamps
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 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}^…
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.
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.
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 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 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…
In this paper we review some results on the Riemannian and almost Hermitian geometry of twistor spaces of oriented Riemannian $4$-manifolds with emphasis on their curvature properties.
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.
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 twistor construction is applied for obtaining examples of generalized complex structures (in the sense of N. Hitchin) that are not induced by a complex or a symplectic structure.
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.
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 present in this paper a $C^1$-metric on an open neighbourhood of the origin in $\RR^{5}$. The metric is of Lorentzian signature $(1,4)$ and admits a solution to the twistor equation for spinors with a unique isolated zero at the origin. The metric is not conformally flat in any neighbourhood of the origin. The construction is based on the Eguchi-Hanson metric with parallel spinors on Riemannian 4-space.
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.
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.
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 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 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…
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.
We prove that there exist global solutions of the twistor equation on the Fefferman spaces of strictly pseudoconvex spin manifolds of arbitrary dimension and we study their properties.
Four-dimensional quaternion-Kahler metrics, or equivalently self-dual Einstein spaces M, are known to be encoded locally into one real function h subject to Przanowski's Heavenly equation. We elucidate the relation between this description and the usual twistor description for quaternion-Kahler spaces. In particular, we show that the same space M can be described by infinitely many different solutions h, associated to different complex (local) submanifolds on the twistor space, and therefore to different (local) integrable complex structures on M. We also study quaternion-Kahler deformations o…
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…
In this paper we investigate Moishezon twistor spaces which have a structure of double covering over a very simple rational threefold. These spaces can be regarded as a direct generalization of the twistor spaces studied by Poon and Kreussler-Kurke to the case of arbitrary signature. In particular, the branch divisor of the double covering is a cut of the rational threefold by a single quartic hypersurface. A defining equation of the hypersurface is determined in an explicit form. We also show that these twistor spaces interpolate LeBrun twistor spaces and the twistor spaces constructed in mat…
In a recent paper (math.DG/0701278) we constructed a series of new Moishezon twistor spaces which is a kind of variant of the famous LeBrun twistor spaces. In this paper we explicitly give projective models of another series of Moishezon twistor spaces on nCP^2 for arbitrary n>2, which can be regarded as a generalization of the twistor spaces of a 'double solid type' on 3CP^2 studied by Kreussler, Kurke, Poon and the author. Similarly to the twistor spaces of 'double solid type' on 3CP^2, projective models of present twistor spaces have a natural structure of double covering of a CP^2-bundle o…
We explicitly construct the twistor spaces of Joyce metrics with torus action that are not treated in Part I (math.DG/0603242). This finishes a construction of all the twistor spaces of Joyce metrics on the connected sum of four complex projective planes.
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.
We provide a simple algebraic construction of the twistor spaces of arbitrary Joyce's self-dual metrics on the 4-manifold H^2 x T^2 that extend smoothly to nCP^2, the connected sum of complex projective planes. Indeed, we explicitly realize projective models of the twistor spaces of arbitrary Joyce metrics on nCP^2 in a CP^4-bundle over CP^1, and show that they contain the twistor spaces of H^2 x T^2 as dense non-Zariski open subsets. In particular, we see that the last non-compact twistor spaces can be realized in rank-4 vector bundles over CP^1 by quite simple defining equations.
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.
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.
In this paper we explicitly construct Moishezon twistor spaces on nCP^2 for arbitrary n>1 which admit a holomorphic C*-action. When n=2, they coincide with Y. Poon's twistor spaces. When n=3, they coincide with the one studied by the author in math.DG/0403528. When n>3, they are new twistor spaces, to the best of the author's knowledge. By investigating the anticanonical system, we show that our twistor spaces are bimeromorphic to conic bundles over certain rational surfaces. The latter surfaces can be regarded as orbit spaces of the C*-action on the twistor spaces. Namely they are minitwistor…
We show that the algebraic dimension of a twistor space over n#CP^2 cannot be two if n>4 and the fundamental system (i.e. the linear system associated to the half-anti-canonical bundle, which is available on any twistor space) is a pencil. This means that if the algebraic dimension of a twistor space on n#CP^2, n>4, is two, then the fundamental system either is empty or consists of a single member. The existence problem for a twistor space on n#CP^2 with algebraic dimension two is open for n>4.
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 consider some classical fibre bundles furnished with almost complex structures of twistor type, deduce their integrability in some cases and study \textit{self-holomorphic} sections of a \textit{symplectic} twistor space. With these we define a moduli space of $ω$-compatible complex structures. We recall the theory of flag manifolds in order to study the Siegel domain and other domains alike, which is the fibre of the referred twistor space. Finally the structure equations for the twistor of a Riemann surface with the canonical symplectic-metric connection are deduced, based on a given conf…
It is shown that there exists a twistor space on the $n$-fold connected sum of complex projective planes $n\mathbb{CP}^2$, whose algebraic dimension is one and whose general fiber of the algebraic reduction is birational to an elliptic ruled surface or a K3 surface. The former kind of twistor spaces are constructed over $n\mathbb{CP}^2$ for any $n\ge 5$, while the latter kind of example is constructed over $5\mathbb{CP}^2$. Both of these seem to be the first such example on $n\mathbb{CP}^2$. The algebraic reduction in these examples is induced by the anti-canonical system of the twistor spaces…
In this paper, we construct tools from the holomorphic twistor spaces that we introduced in \cite{Gindi1} to derive results about the complex geometries of their base manifolds. In particular, we develop a new approach to studying generalized Kahler manifolds that leads to insights into their real and holomorphic Poisson structures.
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.
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.
In 1995 D. Joyce explicitly constructed a series of self-dual metrics with torus action on the connected sums of complex projective planes. In this paper we explicitly construct the twistor spaces of some of Joyce's self-dual metrics. Starting from a fiber space whose fibers are compact singular toric surfaces, we apply a number of birational transformations to obtain the required twistor spaces. In the construction an important role is played by flops, a useful operation in algebraic geometry.
We show that the moduli space $M$ of holomorphic vector bundles on $CP^3$ that are trivial along a line is isomorphic (as a complex manifold) to a subvariety in the moduli of rational curves of the twistor space of the moduli space of framed instantons on $\R^4$, called the space of twistor sections. We then use this characterization to prove that $M$ is equipped with a torsion-free affine connection with holonomy in $Sp(2n,\C)$.