Local rigidity of Einstein 4-manifolds satisfying a chiral curvature condition (Q2225623)

For a compact oriented Einstein 4-manifold \((M,g)\) let \(R_+\) be the part of the curvature operator of \(g\) which acts on self-dual 2-forms. The authors prove that if \(R+\) is negative definite then \(g\) is locally rigid, i.e., any other Einstein metric near to \(g\) is isometric to it. This is a chiral generalisation of Koiso's Theorem, which proves local rigidity of Einstein metrics with negative sectional curvature. The hypotheses posed are roughly one half of Koiso's. The proof uses a new variational description of Einstein 4-manifolds, as critical points of the so-called pure connection action \(S\). The key step in the proof is that when \(R_+<0\), the Hessian of \(S\) is strictly positive modulo gauge.