On pseudo-Riemannian manifolds of even dimension $n\geq 4$, with everywhere vanishing (Fefferman-Graham) obstruction tensor, we construct a complex of conformally invariant differential operators. The complex controls the infinitesimal deformations of obstruction-flat structures, and, in the case of Riemannian signature the complex is elliptic.
Working over a pseudo-Riemannian manifold, for each vector bundle with connection we construct a sequence of three differential operators which is a complex (termed a Yang-Mills detour complex) if and only if the connection satisfies the full Yang-Mills equations. A special case is a complex controlling the deformation theory of Yang-Mills connections. In the case of Riemannian signature the complex is elliptic. If the bundle connection respects a metric on the vector bundle then the complex is formally self-adjoint. In dimension 4 the complex is conformally invariant and generalises, to the f…
For even dimensional conformal manifolds several new conformally invariant objects were found recently: invariant differential complexes related to, but distinct from, the de Rham complex (these are elliptic in the case of Riemannian signature); the cohomology spaces of these; conformally stable form spaces that we may view as spaces of conformal harmonics; operators that generalise Branson's Q-curvature; global pairings between differential form bundles that descend to cohomology pairings. Here we show that these operators, spaces, and the theory underlying them, simplify significantly on con…
Gravitational interactions of higher spin fields are generically plagued by inconsistencies. We present a simple framework that couples higher spins to a broad class of gravitational backgrounds (including Ricci flat and Einstein) consistently at the classical level. The model is the simplest example of a Yang--Mills detour complex, which recently has been applied in the mathematical setting of conformal geometry. An analysis of asymptotic scattering states about the trivial field theory vacuum in the simplest version of the theory yields a rich spectrum marred by negative norm excitations. Th…
For a conformal manifold, we describe a new relation between the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman and Graham and the holonomy of the normal conformal Cartan connection. This relation allows us to prove several results on the vanishing and the rank of the obstruction tensor, for example for conformal structures admitting twistor spinors or normal conformal Killing forms. As our main tool we introduce the notion of a conformal holonomy distribution and show that its integrability is closely related to the exceptional conformal structures in dimensions five and six that were found by Nurow…
We present a global conformal invariant on closed six-manifolds which obstructs the existence of a conformally Einstein metric. We show that this obstruction is nontrivial and, up to multiplication by a constant, is the unique such invariant. This also gives rise to a (possibly trivial) diffeomorphism invariant which obstructs the existence of an Einstein metric. We also discuss global conformal invariants which obstruct the existence of a conformally Einstein metric on closed six-manifolds with infinite fundamental group.
We prove a Pohozaev type identity for non-linear eigenvalue equations of the Dirac operator on Riemannian spin manifolds with boundary. As an application, we obtain that the mean curvature H of a conformal immersion S^{n}-> R^{n+1} satisfies $\int \partial_X H=0$ where X is a conformal vector field on S^{n} and where the integration is carried out with respect to the Euclidean volume measure of the image.<BR> This identity is analogous to the Kazdan-Warner obstruction that appears in the problem of prescribing the scalar curvature on S^{n} inside the standard conformal class.
A Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian (or conformal) structure is conformally Einstein if and only if there is a suitably generic parallel section of a certain vector bundle -- the so-called standard conformal tractor bundle. We show that this characterisation leads to a systematic approach to constructing obstructions to conformally Einstein metrics. Relaxing the requirement that the parallel tractor field be generic gives a natural generalisation of the Einstein equations.
We develop a new approach to the conformal geometry of embedded hypersurfaces by treating them as conformal infinities of conformally compact manifolds. This involves the Loewner--Nirenberg-type problem of finding on the interior a metric that is both conformally compact and of constant scalar curvature. Our first result is an asymptotic solution to all orders. This involves log terms. We show that the coefficient of the first of these is a new hypersurface conformal invariant which generalises to higher dimensions the important Willmore invariant of embedded surfaces. We call this the obstruc…
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 find a new obstruction for a real Einstein 4-orbifold with an A1-singularity to be a limit of smooth Einstein 4-manifolds. The obstruction is a curvature condition at the singular point. For asymptotically hyperbolic metrics, with boundary at infinity a conformal metric, we prove that if the obstruction vanishes, one can desingularize Einstein orbifolds with such singularities. The Dirichlet problem consists in finding Einstein metrics with given conformal infinity on the boundary: we prove that our obstruction defines a wall in the space of conformal metrics on the boundary, and that all t…
The behavior under conformal change of the renormalized volume coefficients associated to a pseudo-Riemannian metric is investigated. It is shown that they define second order fully nonlinear operators in the conformal factor whose algebraic structure is elucidated via the introduction of "extended obstruction tensors". These together with the Schouten tensor constitute building blocks for the coefficients in the ambient metric expansion. The renormalized volume coefficients have recently been considered by Chang-Fang motivated by comparison with the elementary symmetric functions of the eigen…
It is shown that the variational derivative of the integral of Branson's Q-curvature is the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman-Graham. A classification of irreducible conformally invariant tensors modulo quadratic and higher degree terms in curvature is established.
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 paper considers the existence of conformally compact Einstein metrics on 4-manifolds. A reasonably complete understanding is obtained for the existence of such metrics with prescribed conformal infinity, when the conformal infinity is of positive scalar curvature. We find in particular that general solvability in this class depends on the topology of the filling manifold. The obstruction to solvability for arbitrary boundary values is also identified. While most of the paper concerns dimension 4, some general results on the structure of the space of such metrics hold in all dimensions.
We propose a produre of reduction a locally conformal symplectic structure. This procedure of reduction can be applied to wide class of submanifolds. There are no local obstructions for this procedure. But there are global obstructions. We find a necessary and sufficient condition when this reduction holds in terms of the special kind of de Rham cohomology class (tangent to the characteristic foliation) of the Lee form.
We consider the future causal boundary as a tool to find obstructions to conformal extensions, the latter being a slight generalization to conformal compactifications.
We study conformal harmonic coordinates on Riemannian manifolds. These are coordinates constructed as quotients of solutions to the conformal Laplace equation. We show their existence under general conditions. We find that conformal harmonic coordinates are a close conformal analogue of harmonic coordinates. We prove up to boundary regularity results for conformal mappings. We show that Weyl, Cotton, Bach, and Fefferman-Graham obstruction tensors become elliptic operators in conformal harmonic coordinates if one normalizes the determinant of the metric. We give a corresponding elliptic regular…
We define a conformally invariant action S on gauge connections on a closed pseudo-Riemannian manifold M of dimension 6. At leading order this is quadratic in the gauge connection. The Euler-Lagrange equations of S, with respect to variation of the gauge connection, provide a higher-order conformally invariant analogue of the (source-free) Yang-Mills equations. For any gauge connection A on M, we define S(A) by first defining a Lagrangian density associated to A. This is not conformally invariant but has a conformal transformation analogous to a Q-curvature. Integrating this density provides t…
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.
We consider the problem of finding complete conformal metrics with prescribed curvature functions of the Einstein tensor and of more general modified Schouten tensors. To achieve this, we reveal an algebraic structure of a wide class of fully nonlinear equations. Our method is appropriate and delicate as shown by a topological obstruction. Finally, we discuss Hessian equations and Weingarten equations by confirming a key assumption.
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 construct a natural conformally invariant one-form of weight $-2k$ on any $2k$-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold which is closely related to the Pfaffian of the Weyl tensor. On oriented manifolds, we also construct natural conformally invariant one-forms of weight $-4k$ on any $4k$-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold which are closely related to top degree Pontrjagin forms. The weight of these forms implies that they define functionals on the space of conformal Killing fields. On Riemannian manifolds, we show that this functional is trivial for the former form but not for the latter…
We classify locally homogeneous quasi-Sasakian manifolds in dimension five that admit a parallel spinor $ψ$ of algebraic type $F \cdot ψ= 0$ with respect to the unique connection $\nabla$ preserving the quasi-Sasakian structure and with totally skew-symmetric torsion. We introduce a certain conformal transformation of almost contact metric manifolds and discuss a link between them and the dilation function in 5-dimensional string theory. We find natural conditions implying conformal invariances of parallel spinors. We present topological obstructions to the existence of parallel spinors in the…
In this article we develop a new approach to the problem of the stability of locally conformally Kähler structures (l.c.k structures) under small deformations of complex structures and deformations of flat line bundles. We show that under the certain cohomological condition the stability of l.c.k structures does hold. We apply our approach to Hopf manifolds and its generalizations to obtain the stability of l.c.k structures which do not have potential in general. We give an explicit description of the cohomological obstructions of the stability of l.c.k structures on Inoue surfaces with $b_2=0…
We find necessary and sufficient conditions for a Riemannian four-dimensional manifold $(M, g)$ with anti-self-dual Weyl tensor to be locally conformal to a Ricci--flat manifold. These conditions are expressed as the vanishing of scalar and tensor conformal invariants. The invariants obstruct the existence of parallel sections of a certain connection on a complex rank-four vector bundle over $M$. They provide a natural generalisation of the Bach tensor which vanishes identically for anti-self-dual conformal structures. We use the obstructions to demonstrate that LeBrun's anti-self-dual metrics…
In this paper we examine different aspects of the geometry of closed conformal vector fields on Riemannian manifolds. We begin by getting obstructions to the existence of closed conformal and nonparallel vector fields on complete manifolds with nonpositive Ricci curvature, thus generalizing a theorem of T. K. Pan. Then we explain why it is so difficult to find examples, other than trivial ones, of spaces having at least two closed, conformal and homothetic vector fields. We then focus on isometric immersions, firstly generalizing a theorem of J. Simons on cones with parallel mean curvature to …
We extend harmonic map techniques to the setting of more general differential equations in conformal geometry. We obtain an extension of Siu's rigidity to Kahler-Weyl geometry and apply the latter to Vaisman's conjecture. Other applications include topological obstructions to the existence of Kahler-Weyl structures. For example, we show that no co-compact lattice in SO(1,n), n>2, can be the fundamental group of a compact Kahler-Weyl manifold of certain type.
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.
On a conformal manifold, it is well known that parallel sections of the standard tractor bundle with non-vanishing scale are in 1-1 correspondence with solutions of the conformal Einstein equation. In 2 dimensions conformal geometry carries no local information but one can remedy this by equipping the surface with a Möbius structure. The conformal Einstein equation is then a well defined overdetermined system of linear PDEs on the Möbius surface. It turns out however that an additional term involving curvature in the form of the Cotton-York tensor appears in the prolongation of the conformal E…
We consider conformal deformations within a class of incomplete Riemannian metrics which generalize conic orbifold singularities by allowing both warping and any compact manifold (not just quotients of the sphere) to be the "link" of the singular set. Within this class of "conic metrics," we determine obstructions to the existence of conformal deformations to constant scalar curvature of any sign (positive, negative, or zero). For conic metrics with negative scalar curvature, we determine sufficient conditions for the existence of a conformal deformation to a conic metric with constant scalar …
Given any two Einstein (pseudo-)metrics, with scalar curvatures suitably related, we give an explicit construction of a Poincaré-Einstein (pseudo-)metric with conformal infinity the conformal class of the product of the initial metrics. We show that these metrics are equivalent to ambient metrics for the given conformal structure. The ambient metrics have holonomy that agrees with the conformal holonomy. In the generic case the ambient metric arises directly as a product of the metric cones over the original Einstein spaces. In general the conformal infinity of the Poincare metrics we construc…
We give new and rather general gluing theorems for anti-self-dual (ASD) conformal structures, following the method suggested by Floer. The main result is a gluing theorem for pairs of conformally ASD manifolds `joined' across a common piece (union of connected components) of their boundaries. This theorem genuinely operates in the b-category (in the sense of Melrose) and in general the boundary of the joined manifold can be non-empty. The resulting metric is a conformally ASD b-metric or, in more traditional language, a complete conformally ASD metric with cylindrical asymptotics. We also stud…
We apply the theory of Weyl structures for parabolic geometries developed by A. Cap and J. Slovak in to compute, for a quaternionic contact (qc) structure, the Weyl connection associated to a choice of scale, i.e. to a choice of Carnot-Carathéodory metric in the conformal class. The result of this computation has applications to the study of the conformal Fefferman space of a qc manifold. In addition to this application, we are also able to easily compute a tensorial formula for the qc analog of the Weyl curvature tensor in conformal geometry and the Chern-Moser tensor in CR geometry. This ten…
We show that the periodic $η$-invariants introduced by Mrowka--Ruberman--Saveliev~\cite{MRS3} provide obstructions to the existence of cobordisms with positive scalar curvature metrics between manifolds of dimensions $4$ and $6$. The proof combines a relative version of the Schoen--Yau minimal surface technique with an end-periodic index theorem for the Dirac operator. As a result, we show that the bordism groups $Ω^{spin,+}_{n+1}(S^1 \times BG)$ are infinite for any non-trivial group $G$ which is the fundamental group of a spin spherical space form of dimension $n=3$ or $5$.
Chern-Simons invariants of closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifolds are introduced and studied from the basics. Their first-order variation is the Cotton tensor. The properties of the Cotton tensor: symmetry, conformal covariance, trace- and divergence-freedom, are recovered as corollaries of the Chern-Simons invariant. We prove that the Cotton tensor is the obstruction to local conformal flatness in dimension $3$. Finally we discuss the link between Chern-Simons invariants, the eta invariant, and the central value of the Selberg zeta function. This is a survey paper without original results, …
Let $M$ be a closed manifold which admits a foliation structure $\mathcal{F}$ of codimension $q\geq 2$ and a bundle-like metric $g_0$. Let $[g_0]_B$ be the space of bundle-like metrics which differ from $g_0$ only along the horizontal directions by a multiple of a positive basic function. Assume $Y$ is a transverse conformal vector field and the mean curvature of the leaves of $(M,\mathcal{F},g_0)$ vanishes. We show that the integral $\int_MY(R^T_{g^T})dμ_g$ is independent of the choice of $g\in [g_0]_B$, where $g^T$ is the transverse metric induced by $g$ and $R^T$ is the transverse scalar cu…
We compute explicit transgression forms for the Euler and Pontrjagin classes of a Riemannian manifold $M$ of dimension 4 under a conformal change of the metric, or a change to a Riemannian connection with torsion. These formulae describe the singular set of some connections with singularities on compact manifolds as a residue formula in terms of a polynomial of invariants. We give some applications for minimal submanifolds of Kaehler manifolds. We also express the difference of the first Chern class of two almost complex structures, and in particular an obstruction to the existence of a homoto…