Symplectic Calabi-Yau manifolds, minimal surfaces and the hyperbolic geometry of the conifold (Q2389162)

The authors consider an \(SO(3)\)-bundle with connection. Its associated \(2\)-sphere bundle carries a natural closed two-form, which is symplectic precisely when a certain curvature inequality holds. The authors use this to construct non-Kähler symplectic six-manifolds with trivial first Chern class (``symplectic Calabi-Yau threefolds''). They also show that if the \(SO(3)\)-bundle is the bundle of self-dual two-forms on a four-manifold, then one gets that the curvature inequality implies that the space of minimal surfaces is compactifiable. Finally, the authors apply these results in the case when the four-manifold is hyperbolic space. In this case the resulting symplectic threefold is symplectomorphic to a small resolution of the conifold \(xw-yz=0\) in \(\mathbb{C}^4\).