We introduce the notion of a special complex manifold: a complex manifold (M,J) with a flat torsionfree connection \nabla such that (\nabla J) is symmetric. A special symplectic manifold is then defined as a special complex manifold together with a \nabla-parallel symplectic form ω. This generalises Freed's definition of (affine) special Kähler manifolds. We also define projective versions of all these geometries. Our main result is an extrinsic realisation of all simply connected (affine or projective) special complex, symplectic and Kähler manifolds. We prove that the above three types of special geometry are completely solvable, in the sense that they are locally defined by free holomorphic data. In fact, any special complex manifold is locally realised as the image of a holomorphic 1-form α: C^n \to T^* C^n. Such a realisation induces a canonical \nabla-parallel symplectic structure on M and any special symplectic manifold is locally obtained this way. Special Kähler manifolds are realised as complex Lagrangian submanifolds and correspond to closed forms α. Finally, we discuss the natural geometric structures on the cotangent bundle of a special symplectic manifold, which generalise the hyper-Kähler structure on the cotangent bundle of a special Kähler manifold.
We give an intrinsic definition of (affine very) special real manifolds and realise any such manifold $M$ as a domain in affine space equipped with a metric which is the Hessian of a cubic polynomial. We prove that the tangent bundle $N=TM$ carries a canonical structure of (affine) special Kähler manifold. This gives an intrinsic description of the $r$-map as the map $M\mapsto N=TM$. On the physics side, this map corresponds to the dimensional reduction of rigid vector multiplets from 5 to 4 space-time dimensions. We generalise this construction to the case when $M$ is any Hessian manifold.
This is a survey of recent contributions to the area of special Kaehler geometry. It is based on lectures given at the 21st Winter School on Geometry and Physics held in Srni in January 2001.
We prove that every projective special Kähler manifold with \emph{regular boundary behaviour} is complete and defines a family of complete quaternionic Kähler manifolds depending on a parameter $c\ge 0$. We also show that, irrespective of its boundary behaviour, every complete projective special Kähler manifold with \emph{cubic prepotential} gives rise to such a family. Examples include non-trivial deformations of non-compact symmetric quaternionic Kähler manifolds.
We consider cones over manifolds admitting real Killing spinors and instanton equations on connections on vector bundles over these manifolds. Such cones are manifolds with special (reduced) holonomy. We generalize the scalar ansatz for a connection proposed by Harland and Nolle in such a way that instantons are parameterized by constrained matrix-valued functions. Our ansatz reduces instanton equations to a matrix model equations which can be further reduced to Newtonian mechanics with particle trajectories obeying first-order gradient flow equations. Generalizations to Kaehler-Einstein manif…
We prove a duality principle for a special class of submanifolds in pseudo-Euclidean spaces. This class of submanifolds with potential of normals is introduced in this paper. We prove also, for example, that an arbitrary Frobenius manifold can be realized as a certain flat submanifold of this very natural class.
In this article, existence results concerning temporal functions with additional properties on a globally hyperbolic manifold are obtained. These properties are certain bounds on geometric quantities as lapse and shift. The results are linked to completeness properties and the existence of closed isometric embeddings in Minkowski spaces.
We prove that energy minimizing Yang-Mills connections on a compact $G_{2}$-manifold has holonomy equal to $G_{2}$ are $G_{2}$-instantons, subject to an extra condition on the curvature. Furthermore, we show that energy minimizing connections on a compact Calabi-Yau $3$-fold has holonomy equal to $SU(3)$ subject to a similar condition are holomorphic.
We construct a compact convex generating set $\mathcal{C}_n$ of the moduli set of closed connected projective special real manifolds of fixed dimension $n$. We show that a closed connected projective special real manifold corresponds to an inner point of $\mathcal{C}_n$ if and only if it has regular boundary behaviour. Our results can be used to describe deformations of 5d supergravity theories with complete scalar geometries.
In the present paper we prove Liouville-type theorems: non-existence theorems for some complete Riemannian almost product manifolds and special mappings of complete Riemannian manifolds which generalize similar results for compact manifolds.
On a Lorentzian manifold the existence of a parallel null vector field implies certain constraint conditions on the induced Riemannian geometry of a space-like hypersurface. We will derive these constraint conditions and, conversely, show that every real analytic Riemannian manifold satisfying the constraint conditions can be extended to a Lorentzian manifold with a parallel null vector field. Similarly, every parallel null spinor on a Lorentzian manifold induces an imaginary generalised Killing spinor on a space-like hypersurface. Then, based on the fact that a parallel spinor field induces a…
This work is devoted to the study of Einstein equations with a special shape of the energy-momentum tensor. Our results continue Stepanov's classification of Riemannian manifolds according to special properties of the energy-momentum tensor to Kähler manifolds. We show that in this case the number of classes reduces.
We give an intrinsic definition of the special geometry which arises in global N=2 supersymmetry in four dimensions. The base of an algebraic integrable system exhibits this geometry, and with an integrality hypothesis any special Kahler manifold is so related to an integrable system. The cotangent bundle of a special Kahler manifold carries a hyperkahler metric. We also define special geometry in supergravity in terms of the special geometry in global supersymmetry.
In this paper, the relationship between the existence of special lagrangian submanifolds and the collapsing of Calabi-Yau manifolds is studied. First, special lagrangian fibrations are constructed on some regions of bounded curvature and sufficiently collapsed in Ricci-flat Calabi-Yau manifolds. Then, in the opposite direction,it is shown that the existence of special lagrangian submanifolds with small volume implies the collapsing of some regions in the ambient Calabi-Yau manifolds.
We describe extrinsic hyperspheres and totally geodesic hypersurfaces in manifolds with special holonomy. In particular we prove the nonexistence of extrinsic hyperspheres in quaternion-Kaehler manifolds. We develop a new approach to extrinsic hyperspheres based on the classification of special Killing forms.
This paper gives an example of special Lagrangian manifold obtained from a hypersurface of a complex Grassmannian with vanishing first Chern class. The obtained manifold is a 1-torus bundle over the two dimensional real projective space. Such manifolds are interesting for mirror symmetry theory. Other examples of the same type are provided at the end of this article.
The local classification of conformally flat Lorentzian manifolds with special holonomy groups is obtained. The corresponding local metrics are certain extensions of Riemannian spaces of constant sectional curvature to Walker metrics.
The paper is related to the classification of special manifolds and projective special manifolds. One of the result of this paper is that, if the Weil-Petersson metric on a projective special manifold is complete, then the Hodge metrc and the Weil-Petersson metrc are equivalent.
We determine all complete projective special real surfaces. By the supergravity r-map, they give rise to complete projective special Kähler manifolds of dimension 6, which are distinguished by the image of their scalar curvature function. By the supergravity c-map, the latter manifolds define in turn complete quaternionic Kähler manifolds of dimension 16.
An example of a four-dimensional special complex manifold with Norden metric of constant holomorphic sectional curvature is constructed via a two-parametric family of solvable Lie algebras. The curvature properties of the obtained manifold are studied. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the manifold to be isotropic Kählerian are given.
We prove that any simply connected special Kaehler manifold admits a canonical immersion as a parabolic affine hypersphere. As an application, we associate a parabolic affine hypersphere to any nondegenerate holomorphic function. Also we show that a classical result of Calabi and Pogorelov on parabolic spheres implies Lu's theorem on complete special Kaehler manifolds with a positive definite metric.
We prove that each special Lorentzian holonomy group (with the exception of those including the isotropy groups of Kähler symmetric spaces with rank greater than one) can be realized as the holonomy group of a globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold.
We construct smooth families of compact special Lagrangian submanifolds embedded in some toric hyper-K\"ahler manifolds, which never become holomorphic Lagrangian submanifolds via any hyper-Kähler rotations. These families converge to special Lagrangian immersions with self-intersection points in the sense of current. To construct them, we apply the desingularization method developed by Joyce.
The moduli space of the Calabi-Yau three-folds, which play a role as superstring ground states, exhibits the same {\em special geometry} that is known from nonlinear sigma models in $N=2$ supergravity theories. We discuss the symmetry structure of special real, complex and quaternionic spaces. Maps between these spaces are implemented via dimensional reduction. We analyze the emergence of {\em extra} and {\em hidden} symmetries. This analysis is then applied to homogeneous special spaces and the implications for the classification of homogeneous quaternionic spaces are discussed.
We define a measure of spectral asymmetry for G_2 and Spin(7) manifolds. We show that this invariant can be computed in terms of characteristic classes and the covariant constant form defining the G_2 or Spin(7) structure.
We study regular non-semisimple Dubrovin-Frobenius manifolds in dimensions 2,3,4. We focus on the case where the Jordan canonical form of the operator of multiplication by the Euler vector field has a single Jordan block. Our results rely on the existence of special local coordinates introduced in [4] for regular flat F-manifolds with Euler vector field. In such coordinates the invariant metric of the Dubrovin-Frobenius manifold takes a special form which is the starting point of our construction.
We give an explicit formula for the quaternionic Kähler metrics obtained by the HK/QK correspondence. As an application, we give a new proof of the fact that the Ferrara-Sabharwal metric as well as its one-loop deformation is quaternionic Kähler. A similar explicit formula is given for the analogous (K/K) correspondence between Kähler manifolds endowed with a Hamiltonian Killing vector field. As an example, we apply this formula in the case of an arbitrary conical Kähler manifold.
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 consider non-Kaehler compact complex manifolds which are homogeneous under the action of a compact Lie group of biholomorphisms and we investigate the existence of special (invariant) Hermitian metrics on these spaces. We focus on a particular class of such manifolds comprising the case of Calabi-Eckmann manifolds and we prove the existence of an invariant Hermitian metric which is Chern-Einstein, namely whose second Ricci tensor of the associated Chern connection is a positive multiple of the metric itself. The uniqueness is also discussed.
In this paper we examine the structure of Riemannian manifolds with a special kind of Codazzi tensors. We use them to construct globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifolds with complete Cauchy hypersurfaces for any weakly irreducible holonomy representation with parallel spinors, i.e. with a holonomy group which is a semidirect product between $\R^{n-2}$ and one of $\1, SU(k), Sp(1), G_2$ and $Spin(7)$.
We show that the natural S^1-bundle over a projective special Kaehler manifold carries the geometry of a proper affine hypersphere endowed with a Sasakian structure. The construction generalizes the geometry of the Hopf-fibration $\Sr^{2n+1} \longrightarrow \CP^n$ in the context of projective special Kaehler manifolds. As an application we have that a natural circle bundle over the Kuranishi moduli space of a Calabi-Yau threefold is a Lorentzian proper affine hypersphere.
The variation of Hodge structure of a Calabi-Yau 3-fold induces a canonical Kähler metric on its Kuranishi moduli space, known as the Weil-Petersson metric. Similarly, special pseudo Kähler manifolds correspond to certain (abstract) variations of Hodge structure which generalize the above example. We give the classification of homogeneous special pseudo Kähler manifolds of semisimple groups with compact stabilizer.
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…
We consider a generalization of Calabi-Yau structures in the context of $α$-Sasakian manifolds. We study deformations of a special class of Legendrian submanifolds and classify invariant contact Calabi-Yau structures on 5-dimensional nilmanifolds. Finally we generalize to codimension $r$.
We study the question of integrability of a compatible almost complex structure on a compact symplectic 4-manifold, under various natural assumptions on the curvature of the associated almost Kahler metric.
We construct a quaternionic-Kähler manifold from a conical special Kähler manifold with a certain type of mutually-local variation of BPS structures. We give global and local explicit formulas for the quaternionic-Kähler metric, and specify under which conditions it is positive-definite. Locally, the metric is a deformation of the 1-loop corrected Ferrara-Sabharval metric obtained via the supergravity c-map. The type of quaternionic-Kähler metrics we obtain are related to work in the physics literature by S. Alexandrov and S. Banerjee, where they discuss the hypermultiplet moduli space metric …
We construct a duality for F-manifolds with eventual identities and special families of connections and we describe its interactions with several well-known constructions from the theory of Frobenius and F-manifolds.
In this paper, we study solitons on $3$-dimensional manifolds. In particular, we show that $3$-dimensional pseudo-symmetric gradient Ricci solitons and nontrivial gradient Yamabe solitons are locally isometric to either $\mathbb{R}^{3}$, $\mathbb{S}^{3}$, $\mathbb{H}^{3}$, $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{S}^{2}$ or $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{H}^{2}$.
Riera proved at arXiv:1412.6964 that the diffeomorphism group of particular compact manifolds are not Jordan by exhibiting subgroups isomorphic to extra-special $p$-groups of exponent $p$ for primes $p$ satisfying some conditions. Generalising the methods of that paper, we construct a compact connected smooth real manifold for every natural number $r$ whose diffeomorphism group contains not only every extra-special $p$-group, but also every special $p$-group of order $p^r$ independently of its exponent for every prime $p$. We obtain a similar statement about finite Heisenberg groups as well as…
We classify nilmanifolds with an invariant symplectic half-flat structure. We solve the half-flat evolution equations in one example, writing down the resulting Ricci-flat metric. We study the geometry of the orbit space of 6-manifolds with an SU(3)-structure preserved by a U(1) action, giving characterizations in the symplectic half-flat and integrable case.
We introduce a class of potential submanifolds in pseudo-Euclidean spaces (each N-dimensional potential submanifold is a special flat torsionless submanifold in a 2N-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean space) and prove that each N-dimensional Frobenius manifold can be locally represented as an N-dimensional potential submanifold. We show that all potential submanifolds bear natural special structures of Frobenius algebras on their tangent spaces. These special Frobenius structures are generated by the corresponding flat first fundamental form and the set of the second fundamental forms of the submani…
We study the curvature of almost Hermitian manifolds and their special analogues via intrinsic torsion and representation theory. By deriving different forumlae for the skew-symmetric part of the star-Ricci curvature, we find that some of these contributions are dependent on the approach used, and for the almost Hermitian case we obtain tables that differ from those of Falcitelli, Farinola and Salamon. We show how the exterior algebra may used to explain some of these variations.
In this paper, we prove various results on the topology of the Grassmannian of oriented 3-planes in Euclidean 6-space and compute its cohomology ring. We give self-contained proofs. These spaces come up when studying submanifolds of manifolds with calibrated geometries. We collect these results here for the sake of completeness. As applications of our algebraic topological study we present some results on special Lagrangian-free embeddings of surfaces and 3-manifolds into the Euclidean 4 and 6-space.
BPS solutions of 5-dimensional supergravity correspond to certain gradient flows on the product M x N of a quaternionic-Kaehler manifold M of negative scalar curvature and a very special real manifold N of dimension n >=0. Such gradient flows are generated by the `energy function' f = P^2, where P is a (bundle-valued) moment map associated to n+1 Killing vector fields on M. We calculate the Hessian of f at critical points and derive some properties of its spectrum for general quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds. For the homogeneous quaternionic-Kaehler manifolds we prove more specific results depen…
In this article, we introduce and study the notion of a complete special holonomy manifold $(X,ω)$ which is given by a global perturbation potential function, i.e., there is a function $f$ on $X$ such that $ω'=ω-\mathcal{L}_{\nabla f}ω$ is sufficiently small in $L^{\infty}$-norm. We establish some vanishing theorems on the $L^{2}$ harmonic forms under some conditions on the global perturbation potential function.
We classify all complete projective special real manifolds with reducible cubic potential, obtaining four series. For two of the series the manifolds are homogeneous, for the two others the respective automorphism group acts with co-homogeneity one. Complete projective special real manifolds give rise to complete quaternionic Kähler manifolds via the supergravity q-map, which is the composition of the supergravity c-map and r-map. We develop curvature formulas for manifolds in the image of the q-map. Applying the q-map to one of the above series of projective special real manifolds, we obtain …
We formulate a correspondence between affine and projective special Kähler manifolds of the same dimension. As an application, we show that, under this correspondence, the affine special Kähler manifolds in the image of the rigid r-map are mapped to one-parameter deformations of projective special Kähler manifolds in the image of the supergravity r-map. The above one-parameter deformations are interpreted as perturbative $α'$-corrections in heterotic and type-II string compactifications with $N=2$ supersymmetry. Also affine special Kähler manifolds with quadratic prepotential are mapped to one…
The self-similar solutions to the mean curvature flows have been defined and studied on the Euclidean space. In this paper we initiate a general treatment of the self-similar solutions to the mean curvature flows on Riemannian cone manifolds. As a typical result we extend the well-known result of Huisken about the asymptotic behavior for the singularities of the mean curvature flows. We also extend the results on special Lagrangian submanifolds on $\mathbb C^n$ to the toric Calabi-Yau cones over Sasaki-Einstein manifolds.
Under some dimension restrictions, we prove that totally umbilical hypersurfaces of Spin$^c$ manifolds carrying a parallel, real or imaginary Killing spinor are of constant mean curvature. This extends to the Spin$^c$ case the result of O. Kowalski stating that, every totally umbilical hypersurface of an Einstein manifold of dimension greater or equal to $3$ is of constant mean curvature. As an application, we prove that there are no extrinsic hypersheres in complete Riemannian Spin manifolds of non-constant sectional curvature carrying a parallel, Killing or imaginary Killing spinor.
We prove that certain Riemannian manifolds can be isometrically embedded inside Calabi-Yau manifolds. For example we prove that given any real-analytic one parameter family of Riemannian metrics $g_t$ on a 3-dimensional manifold $Y$ with volume form independent of $t$ and with a real-analytic family of nowhere vanishing harmonic one forms $θ_t$, then $(Y, g_t)$ can be realized as a family of special Lagrangian submanifolds of a Calabi-Yau manifold $X$. We also prove that certain principal torus bundles can be equivariantly and isometrically embedded inside Calabi-Yau manifolds with torus actio…
Homogeneous compatible almost complex structures on symplectic manifolds are studied, focusing on those which are special, meaning that their Chern-Ricci form is a multiple of the symplectic form. Non Chern-Ricci flat ones are proven to be covered by co-adjoint orbits. Conversely, compact isotropy co-adjoint orbits of semi-simple Lie groups are shown to admit special compatible almost complex structures whenever they satisfy a necessary topological condition. Some classes of examples including twistor spaces of hyperbolic manifolds and discrete quotients of Griffiths period domains of weight t…
We construct some examples of special Lagrangian submanifolds and Lagrangian self-similar solutions in almost Calabi-Yau cones over toric Sasaki manifolds. For example, for any integer g>0, we can construct a real 6 dimensional Calabi-Yau cone M_g and a 3 dimensional special Lagrangian submanifold L^1_g in M_g which is diffeomorphic to the product of a closed surface of genus g and the real line R, and a 3 dimensional compact Lagrangian self-shrinker L^2_g in M_g which is diffeomorphic to the product of the closed surface of genus g and a circle S^1.
