Anti-self-dual conformal structures with null Killing vectors from projective structures (Q2472468)

The four-dimensional ASD (anti-self-duality) condition underlies the integrability of (ODE, PDE) [\textit{R. S. Ward}, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., A 315, 451--457 (1985; Zbl 0579.35078)]. The conformal four-dimensional structures of signature \((+ + - -)\) are called neutral (there are no non-trivial ASD structures in the Lorentzian signature). The twistor correspondence [\textit{L. J. Mason} and \textit{N. M. Woodhouse}, Integrability, self-duality and twistor theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1996; Zbl 0856.58002)] reduces various solution generation techniques. Some lower dimensional integrable models (Sine-Gordon, KdV, NIS, etc.) arise as a symmetry reduction of the ASD Yang-Mills equations on a flat background. \((M, [g])\) represents a local patch of \(\mathbb R^4\) endowed with a neutral signature conformal structure \([g]\) \(([g]\) is a natural equivalence class of neutral signature metrics). The authors construct the local forms of four-dimensional real analytic neutral signature ASD conformal structures \((M, [g])\) with a null conformal Killing vector (when the space of trajectories inherits a degenerate conformal structure) and show that M is foliated by ASD null surfaces; the two-dimensional leaf space inherits a natural projective structure whose twistor space is the quotient of the twistor space of \((M, [g])\) by the group action induced by the conformal Killing vector. The obtained local classification branches according to the orthogonality in \((M, [g])\) of the conformal Killing vector. Section 6 contains examples of conformal classes with (or with no) Ricci flat metrics: 6.1. Neutral Fefferman conformal metrics; 6.2. ASD pp-waves; 6.3. Pseudo-hyper-Kähler metrics; 6.4. Pseudo-hyper-Hermitian conformal structures; 6.5. Conformal structures containing no Ricci-flat-metrics. Using Szekeres' results [\textit{P. Szekeres}, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. A 274, 206--212 (1963; Zbl 0113.44805)], some metrics that are not conformally Ricci-flat are obtained (see a class of non-conformally vacuum type III neutral ASD conformal structures with non-twisting null conformal Killing vectors). In Section 7, Twistor reconstruction, the authors interpret (in twistor terms) the first case discussed by [\textit{R. S. Ward}, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. A 363, 289--295 (1978; Zbl 0404.53016)], by giving two examples: 7.1. pp-waves; 7.2. Flat conformal structure. Finally, interesting open problems are discussed. See also: \textit{D. Calderbank} [Selfdual 4-manifolds, projective structures, and the Dunajski-West construction (2006), \url{http://arxiv.org/abs/math/06067540-1}].