Complete \(k\)-curvature homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (Q2386430)

This article exhibits the interrelation of local homogeneity and \(k\)-curvature homogeneity in pseudo-Riemannian context. In contrast to \textit{F. Tricerri} and \textit{L. Vanhecke}'s results in the Riemannian case [C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I 302, 233--235 (1986; Zbl 0585.53043)] the authors in [Classical Quantum Gravity 21, No. 15, 3755--3770 (2004; Zbl 1067.53057)] described 1-curvature homogeneous manifolds of neutral signature metrics which were 0-modeled on an irreducible symmetric space and which were not homogeneous. Now they exhibit a family of complete neutral signature metrics on \(\mathbb R^{2k+2}\), \(k>1\), which are \(k\)-curvature homogeneous but not locally homogeneous. These samples give a lower bound for an integer \(k_{pp}\) such that if \(M\) is a complete simply connected pseudo-Riemannian manifold of signature \((p,p)\) which is \(k_{pp}\)-curvature homogeneous, then \(M\) is homogeneous. The existence of such an integer was established by the theorem of F. Podesta and A. Spiro (1996). In the Riemannian setting it is a result of Singer (1960). Moreover, the local scalar Weyl invariants of the manifolds under consideration vanish and they are Ricci flat, Osserman and Ivanov-Petrova.