Generalized vector cross products and Killing forms on negatively curved manifolds (Q2306062)

The paper under review studies Killing tensor fields on Riemannian manifolds. Interested in exploring metrical and/or topological obstructions for the existence of Killing tensor fields, the authors consider the case of negatively curved compact Riemannian manifolds, cf. [\textit{K. Heil} et al., J. Geom. Phys. 106, 383--400 (2016; Zbl 1342.53066); \textit{N. S. Dairbekov} and \textit{V. A. Sharafutdinov}, Mat. Tr. 13, No. 1, 85--145 (2010; Zbl 1249.53050); translation in Sib. Adv. Math. 21, No. 1, 1--41 (2011)]. It is shown that every Killing tensor on a compact Riemannian manifold $(M^n, g)$ with negative sectional curvature is proportional to some power of the metric. As corollary, it is proved that every non-zero Killing 2-form on $M^n$ is parallel, and defines after constant rescaling a Kähler structure on $M^n$. Besides, if $n\not= 3$, then every Killing 3-form on $M^n$ vanishes, whereas if $n=3$, then every Killing 3-form on $M^n$ is parallel. The proofs are based on the use of a novel notion of generalized vector cross products on $\mathbb R^n$ and apply particular characterizations of \(\operatorname{SU}(3)\)-structures on 6-dimensional manifolds.