Bach-flat gradient steady Ricci solitons (Q2636863)

Generalizing the 2-dimensional cigar metric on \(\mathbb{R}^2\), there is a unique (up to scaling) rotationally symmetric gradient Ricci soliton on \(\mathbb{R}^n\), called the Bryant soliton (see [\textit{B. Chow} et al., The Ricci flow: techniques and applications. Part I: Geometric aspects. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2007; Zbl 1157.53034)]). In the paper under review, it is shown that in any dimension \(n\geq 4\) any complete Bach-flat gradient steady Ricci soliton with positive Ricci curvature is isometric to the Bryant soliton. Moreover, it is shown that in dimension \(n=3\) a gradient steady Ricci soliton with divergence-free Bach tensor is either flat or isometric to the Bryant soliton. This improves previous results by the authors on complete locally conformally flat gradient steady Ricci solitons [\textit{H.-D. Cao} and \textit{Q. Chen}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 364, No. 5, 2377--2391 (2012; Zbl 1245.53038); \textit{G. Catino} and \textit{C. Mantegazza}, Ann. Inst. Fourier 61, No. 4, 1407--1435 (2011; Zbl 1255.53034)].