Killing potentials with geodesic gradients on Kähler surfaces (Q2851028)

On a compact Kähler manifold \((M,g)\), a Killing potential is a function \(\tau\in C^\infty(M,\mathbb{R})\) such that \(J\nabla \tau\) is a Killing field, where \(J\) is the almost-complex structure of \(M\). A smooth function is said to have a geodesic gradient if the integral curves of \(\nabla \tau\) are reparametrized geodesics. In this paper, the author classifies all triples \((M,g,\tau)\) with \((M,g)\) a compact Kähler surface and \(\tau\) a Killing potential on \((M,g)\) with geodesic gradient. The complex surfaces obtained are all minimal ruled surfaces, and the associated Kähler metrics are obtained by a Calabi-type construction. This work partly relies on [the author and \textit{G. Maschler}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 593, 73--116 (2006, Zbl 1117.53051)], where triples \((M,g,\tau)\) of compact Kähler surfaces with special Kähler-Ricci potentials are classified.