Einstein-Weyl structures on compact conformal manifolds (Q4935765)

A Weyl structure on a differentiable manifold \(M\) is a pair \(([g],D)\), where \([g]\) is a conformal structure and \(D\) is a torsion-free affine connection on \(M\) such that \(Dg=\theta\otimes g\) for a certain 1-form \(\theta\) (depending on \(g\)). If additionally the trace-free symmetric part of the Ricci tensor \(Ric^D\) of \(D\) vanishes, then \(([g],D)\) is called an Einstein-Weyl structure. Let \(h^D\) be the normalized Ricci tensor of \(D\), that is, \(h^D=(n-2)^{-1}(Ric^D-(2(n-1))^{-1}Scal^Dg)\) with \(Scal^D=tr_g(Ric^D)\). One of the famous conformal invariants is the so-called conformal Cotton-York tensor \(C^D\) (also known as the Schouten-Weyl tensor), which is defined by \(C^D(X,Y,Z)=(D_Yh^D)(X,Z)-(D_Xh^D)(Y,Z)\). In the paper under review, it is proved that any Einstein-Weyl structure with vanishing conformal Cotton-York tensor on a compact manifold \(M\) with \(\dim M\geq 3\) is closed, i.e. \(d\theta=0\). Further consequences are also derived from the paper by \textit{P. Gauduchon} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 469, 1-50 (1995; Zbl 0858.53039)], where such structures are classified.