On the Constant Type of Almost Hermitian Manifolds

We suggest a most natural generalization of the notion of constant type for nearly Kählerian manifolds introduced by A. Gray to arbitrary almost Hermitian manifolds. We prove that the class of almost Hermitian manifolds of zero constant type coincides with the class of Hermitian manifolds. We show that the class of G ₁-manifolds of zero constant type coincides with the class of 6-dimensional G ₁-manifolds with a non-integrable structure. Finally, we prove that the class of normal G ₂-manifolds of nonzero constant type coincides with the class of 4-dimensional G ₂-manifolds with a nonintegrable structure.     

On spinors

For a 2^n-dimensional complex Hermitian vector space S, we prove that any unitary basis of S can be explained as an augmented spinor structure on S. By using this explanation, a SpinC（2n）- action on S is equivalent to an action on a subset of augmented spinor structures. The latter action is a little easy to be understood, and is shown in the last part of this paper. Such kind of understanding could be of use to the discussions of Hermitian manifolds and spin manifolds, especially could help to find connections and elliptical operators.     

A rank-three condition for invariant (1, 2)-symplectic almost Hermitian structures on flag manifolds

This paper considers invariant (1, 2)-symplectic almost Hermitian structures on the maximal flag manifod associated to a complex semi-simple Lie group G. The concept of cone-free invariant almost complex structure is introduced. It involves the rank-three subgroups of G, and generalizes the cone-free property for tournaments related to 𝕊l (n,ℂ) case. It is proved that the cone-free property is necessary for an invariant almost-complex structure to take part in an invariant (1, 2)-symplectic almost Hermitian structure. It is also sufficient if the Lie group is not B _l , l ≥ 3, G ₂ or F ₄. For B _l and F ₄ a close condition turns out to be sufficient. Received: 28 October 2001     

Complete Riemannian metrics with holonomy group G 2 on deformations of cones over S 3 × S 3

Complete Riemannian metrics with holonomy group G ₂ on manifolds obtained by deformation of cones over S ³ × S ³ are constructed.     

Contact structures on product five-manifolds and fibre sums along circles

Two constructions of contact manifolds are presented: (i) products of S ¹ with manifolds admitting a suitable decomposition into two exact symplectic pieces and (ii) fibre connected sums along isotropic circles. Baykur has found a decomposition as required for (i) for all closed, oriented 4-manifolds. As a corollary, we can show that all closed, oriented 5-manifolds that are Cartesian products of lower-dimensional manifolds carry a contact structure. For symplectic 4-manifolds we exhibit an alternative construction of such a decomposition; this gives us control over the homotopy type of the corresponding contact structure. In particular, we prove that \mathbb CP²×S¹{{\mathbb {CP}}^2\times S^1} admits a contact structure in every homotopy class of almost contact structures. The existence of contact structures is also established for a large class of 5-manifolds with fundamental group \mathbbZ₂{{\mathbb{Z}}_2} .     

On invariant notions of Segre varieties in binary projective spaces

Invariant notions of a class of Segre varieties S_(m)(2){\mathcal{S}_{(m)}(2)} of PG(2 ^m − 1, 2) that are direct products of m copies of PG(1, 2), m being any positive integer, are established and studied. We first demonstrate that there exists a hyperbolic quadric that contains S_(m)(2){\mathcal{S}_{(m)}(2)} and is invariant under its projective stabiliser group G_S(m)(2){G_{{\mathcal{S}}_{(m)}(2)}} . By embedding PG(2 ^m − 1, 2) into PG(2 ^m − 1, 4), a basis of the latter space is constructed that is invariant under G_S(m)(2){G_{{\mathcal{S}}_{(m)}(2)}} as well. Such a basis can be split into two subsets whose spans are either real or complex-conjugate subspaces according as m is even or odd. In the latter case, these spans can, in addition, be viewed as indicator sets of a G_S(m)(2){G_{{\mathcal{S}}_{(m)}(2)}} -invariant geometric spread of lines of PG(2 ^m − 1, 2). This spread is also related with a G_S(m)(2){G_{{\mathcal{S}}_{(m)}(2)}} -invariant non-singular Hermitian variety. The case m = 3 is examined in detail to illustrate the theory. Here, the lines of the invariant spread are found to fall into four distinct orbits under G_S(m)(2){G_{{\mathcal{S}}_{(m)}(2)}} , while the points of PG(7, 2) form five orbits.     

Kähler geometry of the universal Teichmüller space and coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group

The Kähler geometry of the universal Teichmüller space and related infinite-dimensional Kähler manifolds is studied. The universal Teichmüller space T may be realized as an open subset in the complex Banach space of holomorphic quadratic differentials in the unit disc. The classical Teichmüller spaces T(G), where G is a Fuchsian group, are contained in T as complex Kähler submanifolds. The homogeneous spaces Diff₊(S ¹)/Möb(S ¹) and Diff₊(S ¹)/S ¹ of the diffeomorphism group Diff₊(S ¹) of the unit circle are closely related to T. They are Kähler Frechet manifolds that can be realized as coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group (and exhaust all coadjoint orbits of this group that have the Kähler structure).     

Clifford structures on Riemannian manifolds

We introduce the notion of even Clifford structures on Riemannian manifolds, which for rank r=2 and r=3 reduce to almost Hermitian and quaternion-Hermitian structures respectively. We give the complete classification of manifolds carrying parallel rank r even Clifford structures: Kähler, quaternion-Kähler and Riemannian products of quaternion-Kähler manifolds for r=2,3 and 4 respectively, several classes of 8-dimensional manifolds (for 5?r?8), families of real, complex and quaternionic Grassmannians (for r=8,6 and 5 respectively), and Rosenfeld?s elliptic projective planes OP², (C⊗O)P², (H⊗O)P² and (O⊗O)P², which are symmetric spaces associated to the exceptional simple Lie groups F₄, E₆, E₇ and E₈ (for r=9,10,12 and 16 respectively). As an application, we classify all Riemannian manifolds whose metric is bundle-like along the curvature constancy distribution, generalizing well-known results in Sasakian and 3-Sasakian geometry.     

Associative Cones and Integrable Systems

Abstract We identify ℝ⁷ as the pure imaginary part of octonions. Then the multiplication in octonions gives a natural almost complex structure for the unit sphere S⁶. It is known that a cone over a surface M in S⁶ is an associative submanifold of ℝ⁷ if and only if M is almost complex in S⁶. In this paper, we show that the Gauss-Codazzi equation for almost complex curves in S⁶ are the equation for primitive maps associated to the 6-symmetric space G₂=T², and use this to explain some of the known results. Moreover, the equation for S¹-symmetric almost complex curves in S⁶ is the periodic Toda lattice, and a discussion of periodic solutions is given. (Dedicated to the memory of Shiing-Shen Chern) * Partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0529756.     

On locally conformal almost Kähler manifolds

In the first section of this note, we discuss locally conformal symplectic manifolds, which are differentiable manifoldsV ²ⁿ endowed with a nondegenerate 2-form Ω such thatdΩ=θ ∧ Ω for some closed form θ. Examples and several geometric properties are obtained, especially for the case whendΩ ≠ 0 at every point. In the second section, we discuss the case when Ω above is the fundamental form of an (almost) Hermitian manifold, i.e. the case of the locally conformal (almost) Kähler manifolds. Characterizations of such manifolds are given. Particularly, the locally conformal Kähler manifolds are almost Hermitian manifolds for which some canonically associated connection (called the Weyl connection) is almost complex. Examples of locally conformal (almost) Kähler manifolds which are not globally conformal (almost) Kähler are given. One such example is provided by the well-known Hopf manifolds.     

The periodicity in stable equivariant surgery

The classical surgery theory (see [5] and [23]) computes the structure set S_m (M, rel ?) of manifolds homotopy equivalent to M relative to the boundary. Siebenmann showed that in topological category, the structure set is 4-periodic: S_m(M, rel ?) ? S_m+4(M × D⁴, rel ?) up to a copy of ?; see [12]. Cappell and Weinberger gave a geometric interpretation of this periodicity in [8]. By using Weinberger's stratified surgery theory (see [24]), we extend this to an equivariant periodicity result for topological manifolds with homotopically stratified actions by compact Lie groups, with D⁴ replaced by the unit ball of certain group representations. In particular, if G is an odd order group acting on a topological manifold M, then the equivariant stable structure sets satisfy S (M, rel ?) ? S(M × D(?⁴ ? ?G), rel ?) up to copies of ?. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

On balanced Hermitian structures on Lie groups

We present several methods for the construction of balanced Hermitian structures on Lie groups. In our methods a partial differential equation is involved so that the resulting structures are in general non homogeneous. In particular, we prove that for 3-step nilpotent Lie groups G of dimension 6, any left-invariant complex structure on G admits a balanced Hermitian metric. Starting from normal almost contact structures, we construct balanced metrics on 6-dimensional manifolds, generalizing warped products. Finally, explicit balanced Hermitian structures are also given on solvable Lie groups defined as semidirect products ${\mathbb{R}^k \ltimes \mathbb{R}^{2n-k}}$ .     

Maps Interchanging f-Structures and their Harmonicity

We study some remarkable classes of metric f-structures on differentiable manifolds (namely, almost Hermitian, almost contact, almost S-structures and K-structures). We state and prove the necessary condition(s) for the existence of maps commuting such structures. The paper contains several new results, of geometric significance, on CR-integrable manifolds and the harmonicity of such maps.     

Geometrie du plan projectif des octaves de Cayley

In this article we study certain geometric aspects of the projective plane P ₂(O) over the octaves (Cayley numbers) over the reals. First, we use the explicit representation of points of P ₂(O) by Hermitian 3×3 matrices over the octaves to determine homogeneous coordinates on the projective line with the help of the fibration of S ¹⁵ with basis S ⁸ and fiber S ⁷. Next we give a table of Lie products in the Lie algebra F ₄, which enables us to explicitly compute the curvature tensor of P ₂(O) as a symmetric space. Finally we exhibit a non-zero skew symmetric 8-form which is invariant under the holonomy group Spin(9). The expression we obtain is the analog of the Kähler form and the fundamental 4-form on the complex and quaternion projective plane, respectively.     

Elliptic Symbols

If G is the structure group of a manifold M it is shown how a certain ideal in the character ring of G corresponds to the set of geometric elliptic operators on M. This provides a simple method to construct these operators. For classical structure groups like G = O(n) (Riemannian manifolds), G = SO(n) (oriented Riemannian manifolds), G = U(m) (almost complex manifolds), G = Spin(n) (spin manifolds), or G = Spin^c(n) (spin^c manifolds) this yields well known classical operators like the Euler—deRham operator, signature operator, Cauchy—Riemann operator, or the Dirac operator. For some less well studied structure groups like Spin^h(n) or Sp(q)Sp(1) we can determine the corresponding operators. As applications, we obtain integrality results for such manifolds by applying the Atiyah—Singer Index Theorem to these operators. Finally, we explain how immersions yield interesting structure groups to which one can apply this method. This yields lower bounds on the codimension of immersions in terms of topological data of the manifolds involved.     

On the Twistor Spaces of Almost Hermitian Manifolds

We study Grassmannian bundles G_k(M) of analytical 2k-planes over an almost Hermitian manifold M²ⁿ, from the point of view of the generalized twistor spaces of [13], and with the method of the moving frame [9]. G₁(M⁴) is the classical twistor space. We find four distinguished almost Hermitian structures, one of them being that of [13], and discuss their integrability and Kählerianity. For n=2, we compute the corresponding Hermitian connections, and derive consequences about the corresponding first Chern classes.     

Structure of unitary groups over finite group rings and its application

In this paper, we determine all the normal forms of Hermitian matrices over finite group rings R = F_q²GR = {F_{{q^2}}}G, where q = p ^α , G is a commutative p-group with order p ^β . Furthermore, using the normal forms of Hermitian matrices, we study the structure of unitary group over R through investigating its BN-pair and order. As an application, we construct a Cartesian authentication code and compute its size parameters.     

Totally geodesic submanifolds in Lie groups

Summary We study minimal and totally geodesic submanifolds in Lie groups and related problems. We show that: (1) The imbedding of the Grassmann manifold G_F(n,N) in the Lie group G_F(N) defined naturally makes G_F(n,N) a totally geodesic submanifold; (2) The imbedding S⁷→SO(8) defined by octonians makes S⁷a totally geodesic submanifold inSO(8); (3) The natural inclusion of the Lie group G_F(N) in the sphere S^{cN^2-1}(√N) of gl(N,F)is minimal. Therefore the natural imbedding G_F(N)<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode"'>→gl(N,F)is formed by the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on G_F(N).     

G 2-manifolds and coassociative torus fibration

Let (φ ₀, g ₀) be a flat G ₂-structure on the torus T ⁷. For a certain finite group Γ-action on T ⁷ preserving the G ₂-structure, Joyce constructed a closed G ₂-manifold M from the resolution of the orbifold T ⁷/Γ. The main purpose of this paper is to prove that there exist global coassociative fibrations on open submanifolds of certain Joyce manifolds.      

Flat Riemannian manifolds are boundaries

In this paper we prove that each compact flat Riemannian manifold is the boundary of a compact manifold. Our method of proof is to construct a smooth action of (₂) ^k on the flat manifold. We are independently preceded in this approach by Marc W. Gordon who proved the flat Riemannian manifolds, whose holonomy groups are of a certain class of groups, bound. By analyzing the fixed point data of this group action we get the complete result. As corollaries to the main theorem it follows that those compact flat Riemannian manifolds which are oriented bound oriented manifolds; and, if we have an involution on a homotopy flat manifold, then the manifold together with the involution bounds. We also give an example of a nonbounding manifold which is finitely covered byS ³ ×S ³ ×S ³.