The ambient obstruction tensor and conformal holonomy (Q2398628)

A conformal structure of signature \((p,q)\) on a smooth manifold \(M\) is an equivalence class of semi-Riemannian metrics on \(M\) of signature \((p,q)\), where two metrics g and \(\tilde g\) are equivalent if \(\tilde g = e^{2 f} g\) for a smooth function \(f\). For conformal geometry the construction of local invariants is more complicated than for semi-Riemannian structures. There exist in the literature two invariant constructions: the conformal ambient metric of Fefferman and Graham and the normal conformal Cartan connection with the induced tractor calculus. In this paper the authors describe a new relation between the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman and Graham and the holonomy of the normal conformal Cartan connection. Using this relation they show several results on the vanishing and the rank of the obstruction tensor, for instance for conformal structures admitting twistor spinors or normal conformal Killing forms. As their main tool they introduce the notion of a conformal holonomy distribution and prove that its integrability is closely related to the exceptional conformal structures in dimensions five and six that were found by \textit{P. Nurowski} [J. Geom. Phys. 55, No. 1, 19--49 (2005; Zbl 1082.53024)] and \textit{R. Bryant} [``Conformal geometry and 3-plane fields on 6-manifolds'', in: Developments of Cartan geometry and related mathematical problems, RIMS Symposium Proceedings 1502, Kyoto Univ. 1--15 (2006)].