31 pages, no figures. Invited contribution to the proceedings of the conference "Riemannian Topology: Geometric Structures on Manifolds"; minor typos corrected, reference added; published version; Riemannian Topology and Geometric Structures on Manifolds (Progress in Mathematics), Birkhauser (Nov 2008)
This article is a summary of some of the author's work on Sasaki-Einstein geometry. A rather general conjecture in string theory known as the AdS/CFT correspondence relates Sasaki-Einstein geometry, in low dimensions, to superconformal field theory; properties of the latter are therefore reflected in the former, and vice versa. Despite this physical motivation, many recent results are of independent geometrical interest, and are described here in purely mathematical terms: explicit constructions of infinite families of both quasi-regular and irregular Sasaki-Einstein metrics; toric Sasakian geometry; an extremal problem that determines the Reeb vector field for, and hence also the volume of, a Sasaki-Einstein manifold; and finally, obstructions to the existence of Sasaki-Einstein metrics. Some of these results also provide new insights into Kahler geometry, and in particular new obstructions to the existence of Kahler-Einstein metrics on Fano orbifolds.
We discuss Sasakian-Einstein geometry under a quasi-regularity assumption. It is shown that the space of all quasi-regular Sasakian-Einstein orbifolds has a natural multiplication on it. Furthermore, necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the `product' of two Sasakian-Einstein manifolds to be a smooth Sasakian-Einstein manifold. Using spectral sequence arguments we work out the cohomology ring in many cases of interest. This type of geometry has recently become of interest in the physics of supersymmetric conformal field theories.
This article is an overview of some of the remarkable progress that has been made in Sasaki-Einstein geometry over the last decade, which includes a number of new methods of constructing Sasaki-Einstein manifolds and obstructions.
We decompose the de Rham Laplacian on Sasaki-Einstein manifolds as a sum over mostly positive definite terms. An immediate consequence are lower bounds on its spectrum. These bounds constitute a supergravity equivalent of the unitarity bounds in dual superconformal field theories. The proof uses a generalization of Kahler identities to the Sasaki-Einstein case.
In this paper we study compact Sasaki manifolds in view of transverse Kähler geometry and extend some results in Kähler geometry to Sasaki manifolds. In particular we define integral invariants which obstruct the existence of transverse Kähler metric with harmonic Chern forms. The integral invariant $f_1$ for the first Chern class case becomes an obstruction to the existence of transverse Kähler metric of constant scalar curvature. We prove the existence of transverse Kähler-Ricci solitons (or {\it Sasaki-Ricci soliton}) on compact toric Sasaki manifolds whose basic first Chern form of the nor…
We study eta-Einstein geometry as a class of distinguished Riemannian metrics on contact metric manifolds. In particular, we use a previous solution of the Calabi problem for Sasakian geometry to prove the existence of eta-Einstein structures on many different compact manifolds, including exotic spheres. We also relate these results to the existence of Einstein-Weyl structures.
In this note we give an explicit construction of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on a class of simply connected 7-manifolds with the rational cohomology of the 2-fold connected sum of $S^2\times S^5$. The homotopy types are distinguished by torsion in $H^4$.
We show that by taking a certain scaling limit of a Euclideanised form of the Plebanski-Demianski metrics one obtains a family of local toric Kahler-Einstein metrics. These can be used to construct local Sasaki-Einstein metrics in five dimensions which are generalisations of the Y^{p,q} manifolds. In fact, we find that these metrics are diffeomorphic to those recently found by Cvetic, Lu, Page and Pope. We argue that the corresponding family of smooth Sasaki-Einstein manifolds all have topology S^2 x S^3. We conclude by setting up the equations describing the warped version of the Calabi-Yau c…
We consider hypersurfaces in Einstein-Sasaki 5-manifolds which are tangent to the characteristic vector field. We introduce evolution equations that can be used to reconstruct the 5-dimensional metric from such a hypersurface, analogous to the (nearly) hypo and half-flat evolution equations in higher dimensions. We use these equations to classify Einstein-Sasaki 5-manifolds of cohomogeneity one.
We present a countably infinite number of new explicit co-homogeneity one Sasaki-Einstein metrics on S^2 x S^3, in both the quasi-regular and irregular classes. These give rise to new solutions of type IIB supergravity which are expected to be dual to N=1 superconformal field theories in four-dimensions with compact or non-compact R-symmetry and rational or irrational central charges, respectively.
We show that for every positive curvature Kahler-Einstein manifold in dimension 2n there is a countably infinite class of associated Sasaki-Einstein manifolds X_{2n+3} in dimension 2n+3. When n=1 we recover a recently discovered family of supersymmetric AdS_5 x X_5 solutions of type IIB string theory, while when n=2 we obtain new supersymmetric AdS_4 x X_7 solutions of D=11 supergravity. Both are expected to provide new supergravity duals of superconformal field theories.
In this paper we give a diameter bound for Sasaki manifolds with positive transverse Ricci curvature. As an application, we obtain the uniqueness of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on compact Sasaki manifolds modulo the action of the identity component of the automorphism group for the transverse holomorphic structure.
Let $S$ be a compact Sasakian manifold which does not admit non-trivial Hamiltonian holomorphic vector fields. If there exists an Einstein-Sasakian metric on $S$, then it is unique.
We describe two simple obstructions to the existence of Ricci-flat Kahler cone metrics on isolated Gorenstein singularities or, equivalently, to the existence of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on the links of these singularities. In particular, this also leads to new obstructions for Kahler-Einstein metrics on Fano orbifolds. We present several families of hypersurface singularities that are obstructed, including 3-fold and 4-fold singularities of ADE type that have been studied previously in the physics literature. We show that the AdS/CFT dual of one obstruction is that the R-charge of a gauge inva…
We give a correspondence between toric 3-Sasaki 7-manifolds S and certain toric Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifolds M. These 5-manifolds are all diffeomorphic to k#(S^2\times S^3), where k=2b_2(S)+1, and are given by a pencil of Sasaki embeddings of M in S and are given concretely by the zero set of a component of the 3-Sasaki moment map. It follows that there are infinitely many examples of these toric Sasaki-Einstein manifolds M for each odd b_2(M)>1. As an application of the proof of the above, we prove that the local deformation space of ASD structures on a compact toric ASD Einstein orbifold is g…
A series of examples of toric Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifolds is constructed. These are submanifolds of toric 3-Sasaki 7-manifolds and such a Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifold corresponds uniquely to a toric 3-Sasaki 7-manifold. This produces examples of quasi-regular Sasaki-Einstein structures on every #k(S^2 xS^3), for k odd. Toric geometry is used to construct examples of positive Ricci curvature toric Sasaki structures on non-spin 5-manifolds. Then the join construction is used to construct infinitely many quasi-regular toric Sasaki-Einstein manifolds with arbitrarily high second Betti number in ever…
We study a variational problem whose critical point determines the Reeb vector field for a Sasaki-Einstein manifold. This extends our previous work on Sasakian geometry by lifting the condition that the manifolds are toric. We show that the Einstein-Hilbert action, restricted to a space of Sasakian metrics on a link L in a Calabi-Yau cone X, is the volume functional, which in fact is a function on the space of Reeb vector fields. We relate this function both to the Duistermaat-Heckman formula and also to a limit of a certain equivariant index on X that counts holomorphic functions. Both formul…
We show that the Reeb vector, and hence in particular the volume, of a Sasaki-Einstein metric on the base of a toric Calabi-Yau cone of complex dimension n may be computed by minimising a function Z on R^n which depends only on the toric data that defines the singularity. In this way one can extract certain geometric information for a toric Sasaki-Einstein manifold without finding the metric explicitly. For complex dimension n=3 the Reeb vector and the volume correspond to the R-symmetry and the a central charge of the AdS/CFT dual superconformal field theory, respectively. We therefore interp…
By combining the join construction from Sasakian geometry with the Hamiltonian 2-form construction from Kähler geometry, we recover Sasaki-Einstein metrics discovered by physicists. Our geometrical approach allows us to give an algorithm for computing the topology of these Sasaki-Einstein manifolds. In particular, we explicitly compute the cohomology rings for several cases of interest and give a formula for homotopy equivalence in one particular 7-dimensional case. We also show that our construction gives at least a two dimensional cone of both Sasaki-Ricci solitons and extremal Sasaki metric…
In this paper, we show that the existence of Sasakian-Einstein metrics is closely related to the properness of corresponding energy functionals. Under the condition that admitting no nontrivial Hamiltonian holomorphic vector field, we prove that the existence of Sasakian-Einstein metric implies a Moser-Trudinger type inequality. At the end of this paper, we also obtain a Miyaoka-Yau type inequality in Sasakian geometry.
We prove that any non-Sasakian contact metric (κ,μ)-space admits a canonical η-Einstein Sasakian or η-Einstein paraSasakian metric. An explicit expression for the curvature tensor fields of those metrics is given and we find the values of κand μfor which such metrics are Sasaki-Einstein and paraSasaki-Einstein. Conversely, we prove that, under some natural assumptions, a K-contact or K-paracontact manifold foliated by two mutually orthogonal, totally geodesic Legendre foliations admits a contact metric (κ,μ)-structure. Furthermore, we apply the above results to the geometry of tangent sphere b…
We obtain infinite classes of new Einstein-Sasaki metrics on complete and non-singular manifolds. They arise, after Euclideanisation, from BPS limits of the rotating Kerr-de Sitter black hole metrics. The new Einstein-Sasaki spaces L^{p,q,r} in five dimensions have cohomogeneity 2, and U(1) x U(1) x U(1) isometry group. They are topologically S^2 x S^3. Their AdS/CFT duals will describe quiver theories on the four-dimensional boundary of AdS_5. We also obtain new Einstein-Sasaki spaces of cohomogeneity n in all odd dimensions D=2n+1 \ge 5, with U(1)^{n+1} isometry.
We extend a result of Patodi for closed Riemannian manifolds to the context of closed contact manifolds by showing the condition that a manifold is an $η$-Einstein Sasakian manifold is spectrally determined. We also prove that the condition that a Sasakian space form has constant $ϕ$-sectional curvature $c$ is spectrally determined.
We show that a connection with skew-symmetric torsion satisfying the Einstein metricity condition exists on an almost contact metric manifold exactly when it is D-homothetic to a cosymplectic manifold. In dimension five, we get that the existence of a connection with skew torsion satisfying the Einstein metricity condition is equivalent to the existence of a Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifold and vice versa, any Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifold generates a two parametric family of connections with skew torsion satisfying the Einstein metricity condition. Formulas for the curvature and the Ricci tensors of t…
We prove the existence of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on certain simply connected 5-manifolds where until now existence was unknown. All of these manifolds have non-trivial torsion classes. On several of these we show that there are a countable infinity of deformation classes of Sasaki-Einstein structures.
We present a non existence result of complete, Einstein hypersurfaces tangent to the Reeb vector field of a regular Sasakian manifold which fibers onto a complex Stein manifold.
We consider supergravity in five-dimensional Anti-De Sitter space $AdS_{5}$ with minimal supersymmetry, encoded by a Sasaki-Einstein metric on a five-dimensional compact manifold $M$. Our main result reveals how the Sasaki-Einstein metric emerges from a canonical state in the dual CFT, defined by a superconformal gauge theory in four dimensional Minkowski space $\mathbb{R}^{3,1}$in the t'Hooft limit where the rank $N$ tends to infinity. We obtain explicit finite $N-$approximations to the Sasaki-Einstein metric, expressed in terms of a canonical (i.e. background free) BPS-state on the gauge the…
We review our study of Sasakian geometry as an agent for proving the existence of Einstein metrics on odd dimensional manifolds. Particular emphasis is given to the Sasakian structures occuring on links of isolated hypersurface singularities.
Several Einstein-Sasaki 7-metrics appearing in the physical literature are fibered over four dimensional Kahler-Einstein metrics. Instead we consider here the natural Kahler-Einstein metrics defined over the twistor space Z of any quaternion Kahler 4-space, together with the corresponding Einstein-Sasaki metrics. We work out an explicit expression for these metrics and we prove that they are indeed tri-Sasaki. Moreover, we present an squashed version of them which is of weak $G_2$ holonomy. We focus in examples with three commuting Killing vectors and we extend them to supergravity backgrounds…
On simply connected five manifolds Sasakian-Einstein metrics coincide with Riemannian metrics admitting real Killing spinors which are of great interest as models of near horizon geometry for three-brane solutions in superstring theory [KW]. We expand on the recent work of Demailly and Kollár [DK] and Johnson and Kollár [JK1] who give methods for constructing Kähler-Einstein metrics on log del Pezzo surfaces. By [BG1] circle V-bundles over log del Pezzo surfaces with Kähler-Einstein metrics have Sasakian-Einstein metrics on the total space of the bundle. Here these simply connected 5-manifolds…
We show that the Einstein-Hilbert functional, as a functional on the space of Reeb vector fields, detects the vanishing Sasaki-Futaki invariant. In particular, this provides an obstruction to the existence of a constant scalar curvature Sasakian metric. As an application we prove that K-semistable polarized Sasaki manifold has vanishing Sasaki-Futaki invariant. We then apply this result to show that under the right conditions on the Sasaki join manifolds of [7] a polarized Sasaki manifold is K-semistable if only if it has constant scalar curvature.
In this note, stimulated by the existence result of Futaki-Ono-Wang for toric Sasaki-Einstein metrics, we obtain new examples of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on S^1-bundles associated to canonical line bundles of P^1-bundles over Kähler-Einstein Fano manifolds, even though the Futaki's obstruction does not vanish. Here the method of Sakane and Koiso is used, and our examples include non-toric Sasaki-Einstein manifolds.
We show that a polarized affine variety admits a Ricci flat Kähler cone metric, if and only if it is K-stable. This generalizes Chen-Donaldson-Sun's solution of the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture to Kähler cones, or equivalently, Sasakian manifolds. As an application we show that the five-sphere admits infinitely many families of Sasaki-Einstein metrics.
Exact solutions to an Einstein-Maxwell(E-D-M) system with an electric current are simple models of global cosmic magnetic phenomena in the universe. In this paper, we consider an E-D-M system with two chiral spinors $ ψ^\pm$ coupled with a gauge field $ A$ and an electromagnetic field $F=dA$. We construct a family of exact solutions to the E-D-M system on four-dimensional static Sasakian spacetimes. The electromagnetic field in the solutions is a contact magnetic field, and the chiral spinors are induced from Sasakian quasi-Killing spinors. We find closed universe models whose weak energy cond…
We show that there are no irregular Sasaki-Einstein structures on rational homology 5-spheres. On the other hand, using K-stability we prove the existence of continuous families of non-toric irregular Sasaki-Einstein structures on odd connected sums of $S^2 \times S^3$.
We discuss in detail the different analogues of Dolbeault cohomology groups on Sasaki-Einstein manifolds and prove a new vanishing result for the transverse Dolbeault cohomology groups $H_{\bar\partial}^{(p,0)}(k)$ graded by their charge under the Reeb vector. We then introduce a new cohomology, $η$-cohomology, which is defined by a CR structure and a holomorphic function $f$ with non-vanishing $η\equiv \mathrm{d}f$. It is the natural cohomology associated to a class of supersymmetric type IIB flux backgrounds that generalise the notion of a Sasaki-Einstein manifold. These geometries are dual …
We show that every toric Sasaki-Einstein manifold $S$ admits a special Legendrian submanifold $L$ which arises as the link ${\rm fix}(τ)\cap S$ of the fixed point set ${\rm fix}(τ)$ of an anti-holomorphic involution $τ$ on the cone $C(S)$. In particular, an irregular toric Sasaki-Einstein manifold $S^{2}\times S^{3}$ has a special Legendrian torus $S^{1}\times S^{1}$. Moreover, we also obtain a special Legendrian submanifold in $\sharp m(S^{2}\times S^{3})$ for each $m\ge 1$.
We construct gradient Kähler-Ricci solitons on Ricci-flat Kähler cone manifolds and on line bundles over toric Fano manifolds. Certain shrinking and expanding solitons are pasted together to form eternal solutions of the Ricci flow. The method we employ is the Calabi ansatz over Sasaki-Einstein manifolds, and the results generalize constructions of Cao and Feldman-Ilmanen-Knopf.
In this article we study the stability problem for the Einstein metrics on Sasaki Einstein and on complete nearly parallel ${\rm G}_2$ manifolds. In the Sasaki case we show linear instability if the second Betti number is positive. Similarly we prove that nearly parallel $\rm G_2$ manifolds with positive third Betti number are linearly unstable. Moreover, we prove linear instability for the Berger space ${\rm SO}(5)/{\rm SO}(3)_{irr} $ which is a $7$-dimensional homology sphere with a proper nearly parallel ${\rm G}_2$ structure.
In this note, we construct new examples of Lorentzian Sasaki-Einstein (LSE) metrics on Smale manifolds $M.$ It has already been established in \cite{Gmz2} that such metrics exist on the so-called torsion free Smale manifolds, i.e. the $k$-fold connected sum of $S^{2}\times S^{3}.$ Now, we show that LSE metrics exist on Smale manifolds for which $H_{2}(M,\mathbb{Z})_{tor}$ is nontrivial. In particular, we show that most simply-connected positive Sasakian rational homology 5-spheres are also negative Sasakian (hence Lorentzian Sasaki-Einstein). Moreover, we show that for each pair of positive in…
We consider some natural infinitesimal Einstein deformations on Sasakian and 3-Sasakian manifolds. Some of these are infinitesimal deformations of Killing spinors and further some integrate to actual Killing spinor deformations. In particular, on 3-Sasakian 7 manifolds these yield infinitesimal Einstein deformations preserving 2, 1, or none of the 3 independent Killing spinors. Toric 3-Sasakian manifolds provide non-trivial examples with integrable deformation preserving precisely 2 Killing spinors. Thus the dimension of Killing spinors is not preserved under Einstein deformations but is only …
We extract a new class of paracontact paracomplex Riemannian manifolds arising from certain cone construction, call it para-Sasaki-like Riemannian manifold and give explicit examples. We define a hyperbolic extension of a paraholomorphic paracomplex Riemannian manifold, which is a local product of two Riemannian spaces with equal dimensions, showing that it is a para-Sasaki-like Riemannian manifold. If the starting paraholomorphic paracomplex Riemannian manifold is complete Einstein with negative scalar curvature then its hyperbolic extension is a complete Einstein para-Sasaki-like Riemannian …
We prove that the identity component of the holomorphic isometry group of a Sasaki-Einstein metric is the identity component of a maximal compact subgroup of its automorphism group.
Motivated by the study of coupled Kähler-Einstein metrics by Hultgren and Witt Nyström and coupled Kähler-Ricci solitons by Hultgren, we study in this paper coupled Sasaki-Einstein metrics and coupled Sasaki-Ricci solitons. We first show an isomorphism between the Lie algebra of all transverse holomorphic vector fields and certain space of coupled basic functions related to coupled twisted Laplacians for basic functions, and obtain extensions of the well-known obstructions to the existence of Kähler-Einstein metrics to this coupled case. These results are reduced to coupled Kähler-Einstein met…
For a given minimal Legendrian submanifold $L$ of a Sasaki-Einstein manifold we construct two families of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian of $L$ and we give a lower bound for the dimension of the corresponding eigenspace. Moreover, in the case the lower bound is attained, we prove that $L$ is totally geodesic and a rigidity result about the ambient manifold. This is a generalization of a result for the standard Sasakian sphere done by Lê and Wang.
The orthogonal decomposition of the Webster curvature provides us a way to characterize some canonical metrics on a pseudo-Hermitian manifold. We derive some subelliptic differential inequalities from the Weitzenböck formulas for the traceless pseudo-Hermitian Ricci tensor and the Chern-Moser tensor of Sasakian manifolds with constant pseudo-Hermitian scalar curvature and Sasakian pseudo-Einstein manifolds respectively. By means of either subelliptic estimates or maximum principle, some rigidity theorems are established to characterize Sasakian pseudo-Einstein manifolds among Sasakian manifold…
Negative Sasakian manifolds, where the first Chern class of the contact subbundle is a torsion class, can be viewed as Seifert-$S^1$ bundles where the base orbifold has an ample orbifold canonical class. We use this framework to settle completely an open problem formulated by C.Boyer and K.Galicki which asks whether or not arbitrary connected sums of $S^2\times S^3$ are negative Sasakian manifolds. As a consequence of the affirmative answer to this problem, there exists so-called Sasaki eta-Einstein and Lorentzian Sasaki-Einstein metrics on all of these five-manifolds and moreover all of these…
Let $(g,X)$ be a Sasaki-Ricci soliton on a Sasakian manifold $S$. We prove that if $(S,g)$ admits a local Sasakian immersion in a Sasakian space form $S(N,c)$ of constant $ϕ$-sectional curvature $c$, then $S$ is $η$-Einstein and its $η$-Einstein constants are rational. Moreover, if $c\leq -3$, $S$ is locally equivalent to the Sasakian space form $S(n,c)$ and its $η$-Einstein constants are determined by $c$. Further results are obtained in the compact setting, i.e. when $c>-3$, under additional hypotheses.
We show that any toric Kähler cone with smooth compact cross-section admits a family of Calabi-Yau cone metrics with conical singularities along its toric divisors. The family is parametrized by the Reeb cone and the angles are given explicitly in terms of the Reeb vector field. The result is optimal, in the sense that any toric Calabi-Yau cone metric with conical singularities along the toric divisor (and smooth elsewhere) belongs to this family. We also provide examples and interpret our results in terms of Sasaki-Einstein metrics.
We show that the standard definitions of Sasaki structures have elegant and simplifying interpretations in terms of projective differential geometry. For Sasaki-Einstein structures we use projective geometry to provide a resolution of such structures into geometrically less rigid components; the latter elemental components are separately, complex, orthogonal, and symplectic holonomy reductions of the canonical projective tractor/Cartan connection. This leads to a characterisation of Sasaki-Einstein structures as projective structures with certain unitary holonomy reductions. As an immediate ap…
In this paper we study the deformation theory of submanifolds characterized by a system of differential forms and provide a criterion for deformations of such submanifolds to be unobstructed. We apply this deformation theory to special Legendrian submanifolds in Sasaki-Einstein manifolds. In general, special Legendrian deformations have the obstruction. However, we show that the deformation space of special Legendrian submanifolds is the intersection of two larger smooth deformation spaces of different types. We also prove that any special Legendrian submanifold admits smooth deformations, whi…
In this paper, we introduce the trans-para-Sasakian manifolds and we study their geometry. These manifolds are an analogue of the trans-Sasakian manifolds in the Riemannian geometry. We shall investigate many curvature properties of these manifolds and we shall give many conditions under which the manifolds are either $η-$Einstein or Einstein manifolds.
This is a sequel to our paper arXiv:1402.2546 to appear in the Journal of Geometric Analysis in which we concentrate on developing some of the topological properties of Sasaki-Einstein manifolds. In particular, we explicitly compute the cohomology rings for several cases not treated in arXiv:1402.2546 and give a formula for homotopy equivalence in one particular 7-dimensional case.
In [11] it was proved that, given a compact toric Sasaki manifold of positive basic first Chern class and trivial first Chern class of the contact bundle, one can find a deformed Sasaki structure on which a Sasaki-Einstein metric exists. In the present paper we first prove the uniqueness of such Einstein metrics on compact toric Sasaki manifolds modulo the action of the identity component of the automorphism group for the transverse holomorphic structure, and secondly remark that the result of [11] implies the existence of compatible Einstein metrics on all compact Sasaki manifolds obtained fr…
