Gradient shrinking Ricci solitons of half harmonic Weyl curvature

Gradient Ricci solitons and metrics with half harmonic Weyl curvature are two natural generalizations of Einstein metrics on four-manifolds. In this paper we prove that if a metric has structures of both gradient shrinking Ricci soliton and half harmonic Weyl curvature, then except for three examples, it has to be an Einstein metric with positive scalar curvature. Precisely, we prove that a four-dimensional gradient shrinking Ricci soliton with \(\delta W^{\pm }=0\) is either Einstein, or a finite quotient of \(S^3\times \mathbb {R}\), \(S^2\times \mathbb {R}^2\) or \(\mathbb {R}^4\). We also prove that a four-dimensional gradient Ricci soliton with constant scalar curvature is either Kähler–Einstein, or a finite quotient of \(M\times \mathbb {C}\), where M is a Riemann surface. The method of our proof is to construct a weighted subharmonic function using curvature decompositions and the Weitzenböck formula for half Weyl curvature, and the method was motivated by previous work (Gursky and LeBrun in Ann Glob Anal Geom 17:315–328, 1999; Wu in Einstein four-manifolds of three-nonnegative curvature operator 2013; Trans Am Math Soc 369:1079–1096, 2017; Yang in Invent Math 142:435–450, 2000) on the rigidity of Einstein four-manifolds with positive sectional curvature, and previous work (Cao and Chen in Trans Am Math Soc 364:2377–2391, 2012; Duke Math J 162:1003–1204, 2013; Catino in Math Ann 35:629–635, 2013) on the rigidity of gradient Ricci solitons.