A cubic form differential inequality with applications to affine Kähler-Ricci flat manifolds (Q1035234)

By a theorem of E. Calabi, every affine complete parabolic affine hypersphere \(M\) is an elliptic paraboloid. Analytically, this means that every smooth strictly convex solution \(f\) of \[ \det\left({{\partial^2 f}\over{\partial x_i \partial x_j}}\right)=1, \] defined on a domain \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^{n}\) must be a quadratic polynomial if \(M\) is affine complete. In the present paper instead of the above PDE the authors study the equation \[ \frac{\partial^2}{\partial x_i \partial x_j}\left (\ln \det\left(\frac{\partial^2 f}{\partial x_k\partial x_l}\right)\right)=0\tag{\(*\)} \] in \(\Omega\). This PDE is closely related to the construction of Ricci flat affine Kähler metrics for affine manifolds. Via the \textit{Calabi metric} \(G:=\sum f_{ij}dx_idx_j\), where \(f_{ij}:={{{\partial}^2 f}\over{\partial x_i\partial x_j}}\), the so called \(\alpha\)-\textit{metric} is defined by \(G^{(\alpha)}:=\det({{{\partial}^2 f}\over{\partial x_i \partial x_j}})^{{-\alpha}\over{n+2}}\cdot G\). Then, the main theorem generalizes Calabi's result as follows: Let \(f\) be a strictly convex \(C^\infty\)-function defined on a domain \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^{n}\), satisfying the PDE (\(*\)). If \(M\) is graph of the function \(f\) and \(M\) is complete with respect to \(G^{(\alpha)}\) \((\alpha \neq n+2)\) then \(M\) must be an elliptic paraboloid. A main tool for the proof is a differential inequality for the Laplacian \(\Delta J\) of the relative Pick invariant \(J\).