On the characteristic connection of gwistor space (Q1935089)

According to [the author and \textit{I. M. C. Salavessa}, Monatsh. Math. 158, No. 4, 335--348 (2009; Zbl 1193.53110); erratum ibid. 160, No. 1, 109--110 (2010; Zbl 1187.53044)] the unit sphere bundle \(SM\) of an oriented Riemannian \(4\)-fold \(M\) has a canonical \(G_2\)-structure, which is cocalibrated if and only if \(M\) is Einstein. By [\textit{T. Friedrich} and \textit{S. Ivanov}, Asian J. Math. 6, No. 2, 303--335 (2002; Zbl 1127.53304)] every cocalibrated \(G_2\)-structure admits a unique connection with totally skew-symmetric torsion, called the \textit{characteristic connection}. In this paper, the author studies the characteristic connection of the canonical \(G_2\)-structure on \(SM\), where \(M\) is an Einstein \(4\)-fold as above. Under the assumption that \(M\) has constant curvature \(k\), the main result is that the torsion of the characteristic connection is parallel with respect to the characteristic connection if and only if \(k=0\) or \(k=1\). In the case \(k=0\), the characteristic connection is flat. In the case \(k=1\), taking for \(M\) the standard sphere, he finds that the characteristic connection coincides with the canonical connection of the Stiefel manifold \(SM=\mathrm{SO}(5)/\mathrm{SO}(3)\) considered as a reductive homogeneous space.