A Weil-Petersson type metric on the space of Fano Kähler-Ricci solitons (Q2082297)

For Kuranishi families of Fano Kähler-Einstein manifolds, a non-constancy of the dimension of the automorphism group poses an obstruction against the existence of a generalized Weil-Petersson metric (unless the automorphism groups are discrete). The authors and \textit{Y.-T. Yau} [Math. Ann. 383, No. 1--2, 809--836 (2022; Zbl 07570345)] showed that all neighboring fibers possess a Kähler-Einstein metric, if and only if the dimension of the space of holomorphic vector fields is constant. The result was extended to families of \textit{Fano-Ricci solitons}. A Fano-Ricci soliton \(M\) by definition possesses a Kähler form \(\omega_g\) that represents the class \(2\pi c_1(M)\) and a \textit{Ricci potential} \(f\) such that \[ \mathbf{Ric}(\omega_g) = \omega_g + \sqrt{-1}\partial\overline{\partial} f \, . \] The latter is normalized satisfying \(\int_M \exp(f) dV_g = \int_M dV_g\). On Fano-Ricci solitons \textit{twisted} adjoint operators like \(\overline{\partial}^*_f\) and a twisted Laplacian \(\Delta_f\) are well-defined, yielding twisted harmonic Kodaira-Spencer forms and ultimately a Weil-Petersson type metric on the parameter space where the pertinent volume form is equal to \(\exp(f)\, dV_g\). A main result (Theorem~2.2) of this work by Cao, Sun, and Zhang is to carry over Kuranishi's approach to deformations of a Fano-Ricci manifolds \(M_0\) in the sense of the integrability condition and harmonic projection of a \((0,1)\)-form \(\varphi\) on \(M_0\times B\) with values in the holomorphic tangent bundle of the given central fiber \(M_0\), which results in the existence of a deformation theory for this class of manifolds (under the above constancy condition). The necessary closedness of \(\varphi\) under the operator \(\overline{\partial}^*_{f_0}\) for this approach is characterized in Theorem~2.3. The above mentioned equivalence of the existence of Fano-Ricci structures on neighboring fibers in [loc. cit.] was found equivalent to all automorphism groups being isomorphic (Theorem~3.1). This led to the result that these conditions are equivalent to the existence of a Weil-Petersson type metric being independent of the choice of the particular Kähler-Einstein metric on the fibers. The difference of the Weil-Petersson metric and the Donaldson metric involves the operator \((1 + \Delta_f)^{-1}\) (cf. Proposition~3.1). A further main result (Theorem~3.3) states that for a Fano-Ricci manifold such that the Weil-Petersson metric is well-defined the group \(\mathrm{Aut}_0\) acts on the parameter space in a trivial way leading to an equivariant action of the whole automorphism group. Furthermore, in this case the potential functions \(f_t\) for the fibers \(\mathcal{X}_t\) are computed on the first infinitesimal neighborhood of the distinguished point, i.e., up to elements of \(O(|t|^2)\). Finally it is shown that the approach to deformation theory in the sense of Kuranishi yields normal coordinates, and a close relationship with the value up to order two of the Weil-Petersson metric at the distinguished point of the parameter space \(B\) implying the Kähler property and a possible computation of the curvature.