Topological restrictions for circle actions and harmonic morphisms (Q1396499)

Harmonic morphisms are maps between Riemannian manifolds which preserve local harmonic functions. Following ideas of \textit{P. Baird} [Ann. Inst. Fourier 40, 177-212 (1990; Zbl 0676.58023)], the authors show that a non-constant harmonic morphism \(\phi : (M^{n+1},g) \to (N^{n},h)\) between compact orientable Riemannian manifolds, induces an \({\mathbb S}^{1}\)-action on the domain which has topological implications on \(M^{n+1}\) (obtained as general results on smooth circle actions whose fixed points are isolated singularities, in the first half of the paper), namely its Pontryagin numbers must vanish (forcing the signature to be zero), while the Euler number is zero if \(n\geq 4\), even and equal to the number of critical points of \(\phi\), when \(n=3\). This rules out the existence of non-constant harmonic morphisms with one-dimensional fibres from \({\mathbb S}^{2n}\) (\(n\geq 3\)), \({\mathbb C}P^{n}\) (\(n\geq 1\)), \({\mathbb H}P^{n}\) (\(n\geq 2\)), \({\mathbb S}^{2n}\times P_{g}\) (\(n\geq 2, g\neq 1\) or \(n=1, g\geq 2\)), \(S_{d}\) (\(d\neq 2\)), where \(P_{g}\) is the closed oriented surface of genus \(g\) and \(S_{d}\) is a complex surface of degree \(d\) defined by: \(S_{d} = \{ [z]\in {\mathbb C}P^{3} \mid z_{1}^{d} + \cdots + z_{4}^{d} =0 \}\). Moreover, if \((M^{4},g)\) is a compact orientable half-conformally flat Riemannian manifold (i.e. half of the Weyl tensor vanishes) with zero scalar curvature, then a non-constant one-dimensional-fibres harmonic morphism can only be, up to homotheties and Riemannian coverings, the canonical projection between flat tori.