The geometry of the Toda equation (Q1589699)

Recall that a Weyl manifold is a manifold with a fixed conformal structure and a torsion-free connection which preserves the conformal structure and a Weyl manifold is called an Einstein-Weyl manifold if the symmetric trace-free part of the Ricci tensor of the connection vanishes. Ward had shown how to construct a three-dimensional Einstein-Weyl space from a solution to the \(SU(\infty)\) Toda equation which is \(u_{xx} + u_{yy} + (e^u)_{zz} = 0\). Not every Einstein-Weyl manifold can be constructed by this method and if that happens it is said that the manifold admits a Toda structure. The author studies Toda structures on Einstein-Weyl manifolds using a nice observation that solutions to the Toda equation on a fixed Einstein-Weyl background are given by solutions to a linear system in this geometry. He classifies Toda structures on Einstein-Weyl manifolds and finds some obstructions to the existence of Toda structures. For example, he shows that among the Berger spheres only the unit sphere has such a structure.