No label defined (Q4399994)

In this thesis, the author studies Jacobi operators on semi-Riemannian manifolds. Jacobi operators and Jacobi vector fields arise in a natural way in the study of geodesic variations as a measure of geodesic deviation. Since Jacobi operators are self-adjoint, the author carries out his analysis from two points of view. He studies the problem (closely related to the ``Osserman problem'') of the constancy of eigenvalues of Jacobi operators. Also, he investigates the influence of the geometry of a manifold on the existence of distinguished eigenspaces for Jacobi operators. In Chapter 1, the author presents both problems in Riemannian and Lorentzian geometries and then in the more general case of semi-Riemannian manifolds. In Chapter 2, the author points out the existence of strong differences in the analysis of the Osserman condition for semi-Riemannian metrics with respect to the Riemannian and Lorentzian analogues by showing the existence of Osserman metrics of any signature \((p,q)\), \(p,q\geq 2\), which are not locally symmetric, not even locally homogeneous. These examples motivate the study of the special class of Osserman semi-Riemannian spaces which are called ``special Osserman manifolds''. They may be viewed, beside the spaces of constant curvature, as the simplest semi-Riemannian manifolds from the point of view of their curvature. In Chapter 3, the author shows that they are locally symmetric and that, if the dimension is different from 16 and 32, they are locally isometric to one of the following manifolds: indefinite Kähler of constant holomorphic sectional curvature, indefinite quaternionic Kähler of constant quaternionic sectional curvature, para-Kähler of constant paraholomorphic sectional curvature, or paraquaternionic Kähler of constant paraquaternionic sectional curvature. In Chapter 4, the author studies the existence of distinguished eigenspaces for Jacobi operators and focuses on the most unknown classes of special Osserman spaces: para-Kähler and paraquaternionic Kähler manifolds. He characterizes the constancy of the paraholomorphic and paraquaternionic sectional curvatures by the existence of eigenspaces of the Jacobi operators generated by the paracomplex and paraquaternionic structures, respectively.