Jumps, folds and hypercomplex structures (Q2004018)

The twistor space of a hyper-complex manifold \(M^{2n}\) is a complex manifold \(Z\), canonically associated to \(M\), which holomorphically fibers over \(\mathbb{C}\mathrm{P}^1\) and comes equipped with an anti-holomorphic involution \(\sigma\). The manifold \(M\) can be recovered from its twistor space as (a connected component of) the space of \(\sigma\)-invariant sections of \(Z\) whose normal bundles are isomorphic to \(\mathcal{O}(1)^{\oplus n}\). If one forgets about \(\sigma\)-invariance, one instead obtains the complexification of \(M\). \par The authors of this article investigate, starting from an arbitrary complex manifold which fibers holomorphically over \(\mathbb{C}\mathrm{P}^1\), the geometry on the space \(M\) of sections whose normal bundles are isomorphic to \(\bigoplus_{i=1}^n \mathcal O(k_i)\), where \(k_i\in \{0,1,2\}\) and \(\sum k_i=n\). After reviewing some examples, they find that any connected component which contains a section whose normal bundle is \(\mathcal O(1)^{\oplus n}\) carries a so-called integrable \(2\)-Kronecker structure. They then study how to extend the Obata connection, which is defined only on an open subset of \(M\), to a meromorphic connection on the full space. In the case where \(Z\) is a (partial) compactification of the twistor space of a hypercomplex manifold, it is shown that this extended, meromorphic Obata connection is logarithmic.