Locally homogeneous four-dimensional manifolds of signature \((2,2)\) (Q2436702)

A pseudo-Riemannian manifold curvature is homogeneous up to order \(k\) if for any \(p,q\in M\) there exists a linear isometry \(\varphi: T_pM\rightarrow T_qM\) such that for \(i=1,\dots,k\) holds \(\varphi^*(\nabla^i R(q))= \nabla^i R(p)\). In the special case \(k=0\) we say just curvature homogeneous. Clearly, a locally homogeneous manifold is curvature homogeneous up to any order \(k\). The study of the opposite problem, namely determining conditions under which a curvature homogeneous manifold up to order \(k\) is locally homogeneous, was initiated by Singer. If the manifold \((M,g)\) is curvature homogeneous up to order \(k\) for \(k\) ``large enough'', then \(M\) is locally homogenous. There are examples in dimension 3 for both Riemannian and Lorentzian signatures of curvature homogeneous manifolds (of order zero) which are not locally homogeneous. For Riemannian 3-dimensional and 4-dimensional manifolds, curvature homogeneity of order 1 implies local homogeneity. For Lorentzian 3-dimensional manifolds, curvature homogeneity of order 1 does not imply local homogeneity. In the present paper, it is shown that every pseudo-Riemannian 4-dimensional manifold with signature \((2,2)\) with a non-degenerate Ricci operator and which is curvature homogeneous up to order 1 (or, in particular, which is locally homogeneous) is isometric to a Lie group with an invariant metric.