Chern-Simons invariant and conformal embedding of a 3-manifold (Q2266866)

Let \(M\) be a closed oriented Riemannian 3-manifold, \(e\), \(\widetilde e\) be oriented fields of orthonormal frames of \(M\) and \(\Phi(e)\) the Chern-Simons 3-form associated with \(e\). Put \[ CS(e)= {1\over 8\pi^2} \int_M\Phi(e), \] which is called the Chern-Simons integral of \(e\). The following formula is proved, where \(A: M\to SO(3)\) is the difference map given by \(\widetilde e= eA\). There also are given examples of 3-manifolds for which the following congruence holds: \(CS(\widetilde e)\equiv CS(e)\,\text{mod}\, 2\). In the second part the Gauss map \(G: M\to S^3\) is considered which sends \(x\in M\) to \(e_0(x)\), where \(e_0\) is the unit normal vector field determined by the orientation. Let \((e_1,e_2,e_3)\) be a local orthonormal frame. Moreover let \(M^3\) inherit the ``left'' quaternionic frame \(e_+=(e_1,e_2,e_3)= (ie_0, je_0, ke_0)\) and the ``right'' quaternionic frame \(e_-(e_0i, e_0 j,ke_0k)\). It is proved that \(CS(e_+=- CS(e_-)= G\). As Corollary the authors prove that there exist infinitely many metrics on \(S^3\) so that they are not induced from conformal embeddings: \(S^3\to E^4\), but the associated Chern-Simons integrals are even numbers.