On Bach-flat gradient shrinking Ricci solitons (Q1951677)

A complete Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g_{ij})\) is called a gradient Ricci soliton if there exists a smooth function \(f\) on \(M^n\) such that the Ricci tensor \(R_{ij}\) of the metric \(g\) satisfies the equation \[ R_{ij}+\nabla_i\nabla_j f=\rho g_{ij} \] for some constant \(\rho\). For \(\rho=0\) the Ricci soliton is steady, for \(\rho>0\) it is shrinking, and for \(\rho<0\) expanding. In this paper, the authors investigate an interesting class of complete gradient shrinking Ricci solitons: those with vanishing Bach tensor. On any manifold \((M^n,g_{ij})\), \(n\geqslant 4\), the Bach tensor is defined by \[ B_{ij}=\frac{1}{n-3}\nabla^{k}\nabla^{l} W_{ikjl}+\frac{1}{n-2}R_{kl}W_{i_j}{}^{k l}, \] \(W_{ikjl}\) being the Weyl tensor. It is easy to see that if \((M^n,g_{ij})\) is either locally conformally flat or Einstein, then \((M^n,g_{ij})\) is Bach-flat: \(B_{ij}=0\). The authors show that Bach-flat 4-dimensional gradient shrinking Ricci solitons are either Einstein or locally conformally flat. More generally, for \(n\geqslant 5\), they prove that a Bach-flat gradient shrinking Ricci soliton is either Einstein, or a finite quotient of the Gaussian shrinking soliton \(\mathbb R^n\) or the product \(N^{n-1}\times\mathbb R\), where \(N^{n-1}\) is an Einstein manifold of positive scalar curvature.