A new construction of compact torsion-free \(G_2\)-manifolds by gluing families of Eguchi-Hanson spaces (Q2228092)

In a nutshell, the authors set up new seven-dimensional smooth compact Riemannian manifolds with holonomy group contained in one of the five noteworthy simple Lie groups and they briefly describe their construction in the introduction. Editorial remark: For a more detailed summary, see the abstract of the paper: ``We give a new construction of compact Riemannian \(7\)-manifolds with holonomy \(G_2\). Let \(M\) be a torsion-free \(G_2\)-manifold (which can have holonomy a proper subgroup of \(G_2)\) such that \(M\) admits an involution \(\iota\) preserving the \(G_2\)-structure. Then \(M / \langle \iota \rangle\) is a \(G_2\)-orbifold, with singular set \(L\) an associative submanifold of \(M\), where the singularities are locally of the form \(\mathbb{R}^3 \times (\mathbb{R}^4 / \{\pm 1 \})\). We resolve this orbifold by gluing in a family of Eguchi-Hanson spaces, parametrized by a nonvanishing closed and coclosed 1-form \(\lambda\) on \(L\). Much of the analytic difficulty lies in constructing appropriate closed \(G_2\)-structures with sufficiently small torsion to be able to apply the general existence theorem of the first author. In particular, the construction involves solving a family of elliptic equations on the noncompact Eguchi-Hanson space, parametrized by the singular set \(L\). We also present two generalizations of the main theorem, and we discuss several methods of producing examples from this construction.''