Twistor spaces of even dimensional Riemannian manifolds (Q2367485)

Four-dimensional Riemannian manifolds have a well developed `twistor theory'. There is associated to any four dimension of Riemannian manifold \(M\) a twistor space \(Z(M)\). This is a certain \(S^ 2\) bundle over \(M\) with an almost complex structure. The almost complex structure is integrable precisely when the manifold is self-dual. There are equivalences between certain linear field equations on \(M\) and cohomology groups of holomorphic line bundles on \(Z(M)\). These results are due to Atiyah, Hitchin and Singer and references are given in the present paper. The construction of the twistor space of \(M\) was generalised to the case of \(M\) even-dimensional by O'Brian and Rawnsley. They showed that the almost complex structure on the twistor space was integrable when the manifold was conformally flat. Later the correspondence between field equations and holomorphic line bundles was given in the even-dimensional case by the reviewer. The present work gives an alternative construction of the twistor space \(Z(M)\) and the hyperplane bundle \(H\) over it for even dimensional spin \(M\). The construction of \(Z(M)\) and \(H^ 2\) also works if \(M\) is not spin. This construction enables the author to prove a correspondence between solutions of the twistor equation on \(M\) and holomorphic sections of \(H\) over \(Z(M)\) even when the almost complex structure on \(Z(M)\) is not integrable.