Deformation theory of deformed Donaldson-Thomas connections for \(\mathrm{Spin}(7)\)-manifolds (Q2665600)

In this article, the authors study properties of the moduli space of deformed Donaldson-Thomas connections on a \(\text{Spin}(7)\)-manifold, for their alternative notion of such Hermitian connections. Namely, these are defined as Hermitian connections \(\nabla\) on a smooth complex line bundle \(L\) over a \(\text{Spin}(7)\)-manifold \(X^8\) that satisfy the following equations for the curvature 2-form \(F_{\nabla}\) of \(\nabla\): \[ \pi _{7}^{2}\left( {{F}_{\nabla }}+\frac{1}{6}*F_{\nabla }^{3} \right)=0\text{ and }\pi _{7}^{4}\left( F_{\nabla }^{2} \right)=0, \] where \(\pi _{l}^{k}:{{\Omega }^{k}}\to \Omega _{l}^{k}\) is the projection on the subspace \(\Omega _{l}^{k}\) of \(k\)-forms corresponding to the \(l\)-dimensional irreducible representation of \(\text{Spin}(7)\), and \(*\) is the Hodge star-operator. Let \({{\mathcal{M}'}_{\text{Spin}(7)}}\) denote the subset of all deformed Donaldson-Thomas connections as defined above, such that \({*F_{\nabla }^{4}}/{24}\;-1\) is nowhere vanishing modulo the \(\text{U}(1)\)-gauge action. The infinitesimal deformation and local structure of the space \({{\mathcal{M}'}_{\text{Spin}(7)}}\) are studied, and it is shown that, assuming \({{\mathcal{M}'}_{\text{Spin}(7)}} \ne \varnothing \), this is a smooth manifold if the \(\text{Spin}(7)\)-structure \(\Phi\) is perturbed generically in some cases; it is also finite-dimensional with dimension equal to the first Betti number of \(X^8\) if \(\Phi\) is torsion-free. The authors, moreover, show that \({{\mathcal{M}'}_{\text{Spin}(7)}}\) has a canonical orientation if \({{H}^{2}}(\#_{\nabla} )=\left\{ 0 \right\}\), for any \([\nabla ]\in {{\mathcal{M}'}_{\text{Spin}(7)}}\), where \({{H}^{2}}(\#_{\nabla} )\) denotes the second cohomology of an appropriately introduced complex \(\#_{\nabla} \). The main article, as well as its extensive appendix, contain a number of non-trivial computations and identities that can have a wider applicability in the study of \(\text{Spin}(7)\)-geometry.