Hyperkähler geometry of rational curves in twistor spaces (Q2677335)

In hyper-complex and hyper-Kähler geometry, an important role is played by the twistor space \(\mathcal Z\) associated to such a manifold \(M\). This is a complex manifold of one (complex) dimension higher which holomorphically fibers over \(\mathbb{P}^1\) and admits an anti-holomorphic involution \(\sigma\) covering the antipodal map on \(\mathbb P^1\). The original manifold \(M\) can be recovered as (part of) the moduli space of \(\sigma\)-invariant sections whose normal bundle is \(\bigoplus \mathcal O(1)\). In this paper, the authors study more general (families of) holomorphic curves in the twistor space of a hyper-complex or hyper-Kähler manifold, namely the \(\sigma\)-invariant curves of degree \(d>1\) which are cohomogically stable, meaning that \(h^1(N_{C/\mathcal Z}(-2))=0\), where \(N_{C/\mathcal{Z}}\) denotes the normal bundle of the curve \(C\subset \mathcal Z\). The first author had pointed out in earlier work that a subset of the Douady space of such curves, which we denote by \(M_d\), admits a hyper-complex, respectively pseudo-hyper-Kähler structure if \(M\) is hyper-complex, respectively hyper-Kähler. The main result of the authors is a proof that, in the hyper-Kähler case, the signature of the metric on \(M_d\) is \((2d+2,2d-2)\). Moreover, in both cases the authors construct a natural submersion from \(M_d\) to \(\mathbb{R}\mathrm{P}^{2d-2}\) such that on an open and dense subset \(U_d\subset M_d\), the fibers of this map admit a so-called \(d\)-hyper-complex structure. After proving this theorem, the case where \(M\) is an ALE or ALF gravitational instanton of type \(A_k\) is discussed in more detail. The paper is written in the terse style characteristic of many works of the first author, with short and highly technical proofs.