Locally conformally flat weakly-Einstein manifolds (Q1791635)

The Ricci tensor and the scalar curvature are intensively studied being natural Riemannian invariants. Nevertheless, there are several other natural symmetric tensor fields defined on a Riemannian manifold. Maybe the most simple after the Ricci tensor is \(\check{R}_{ij}=R_{i\alpha\beta\gamma}R_j^{\alpha\beta\gamma}\). A non-Einstein Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) is said to be \textit{weakly-Einstein} if \(\check{R}=\frac{||R||^2}{n}g\). In contrast to Einstein metrics, the previous condition does not ensure the constancy of \(||R||^2\). If this happens, the manifold is known as a \textit{super-Einstein} manifold. It is shown that a three-dimensional Riemannian manifold is weakly-Einstein if and only if the Ricci operator is of rank one. Also proved is a classification theorem for conformally flat weakly-Einstein manifolds. More precisely, we have the following list: (i) \(\dim M=4\) and \((M,g)\) has vanishing scalar curvature; (ii) \(\dim M\neq 4\) and either \((M,g)\) is locally homothetic to a warped product \(I\times_f N(c)\), with the metric \(g=dt^2+f^2g_N\), where \(I\) is a real interval, \((N(c),g_N)\) is a manifold of constant sectional curvature \(c\in\{0,\pm1\}\) for some specific warping function \(f\), or \((M,g)\) is locally isometric to a product \(N_1^m(c)\times N_2^m(-c)\), with \(m\geq 2\). Finally, weakly-Einstein hypersurfaces in Euclidean spaces are classified.