Locally conformally flat Lorentzian gradient Ricci solitons (Q363207)

A gradient Ricci soliton is a triple \((M,g,f)\) where \(M\) is a manifold, \(g\) is a pseudo-Riemannian metric on \(M\) and \(f\) is a smooth function such that \(\mathrm{hes}{}_f+ \rho = \lambda g\). Here \(\mathrm{hes}{}_f\) is the Hessian of \(f\), \(\rho\) is the Ricci tensor of \(g\) and \(\lambda\) is a real number. In the paper under review the authors characterise gradient Ricci solitons where \(g\) is locally conformally flat. They show that in this case \(g\) is isometric (a) to a Robertson-Walker metric near any point where \(g \big( \nabla f, \nabla f \big) \neq 0\) and (b) to a plane-wave metric on open subsets where \(g \big( \nabla f, \nabla f \big) = 0\).