Structure of second-order symmetric Lorentzian manifolds (Q1940823)

The authors study Lorentzian manifolds with vanishing second derivative \(\nabla \nabla R \equiv 0\) of the curvature tensor, which are called \textit{second-order symmetric Lorentzian spaces}. Among others they give the following main result of the paper: Theorem. An \(n\)-dimensional proper 2nd-symmetric Lorentzian space \((M,g)\) is locally isometric to a direct product \((M_1 \times M_2,g_1 \oplus g_2)\) where \((M_2,g_2)\) is a non-flat Riemannian symmetric space and \((M_1,g_1)\) is a proper generalized Cahen-Wallach space of order \(2\), defined as \(M_1=\mathbb{R}^{d+2} \, (d \geq 0)\) endowed with the metric \[ g_1=-2du(dv+du \sum_{i,j=2}^{d+1} p_{ij}(u)x^i x^j)+\sum_{i=2}^{d+1} (dx^2)^2, \] where \(u,v,x^2,\dots,x^{d+1}\) are the natural coordinates of \(\mathbb{R}^{d+2}\) and each function \(p_{ij}\) is affine. Moreover, if \((M,g)\) is also geodesically complete and simply connected, then \((M,g)\) is globally isometric to one such direct product. They further carry out a direct analysis of the second-symmetry partial differential equations leading to several results on Brinkmann spaces.