4D Conformal metrics, the eikonal equation and fourth-order ODEs (Q5717869)

The paper contains a very elegant continuation of the study of the relationship between classes of ODEs (Ordinary Differential equations) and some PDEs (Partial Differential equations) and the induced differential geometry on their associated solution spaces, with the goal to encode either the vacuum Einstein equations or the conformal Einstein equations into these ODEs and PDEs. The authors show that on the space of fourth-order ODEs, \(u''''=f(s,u,u',u'',u''')\), a four-dimensional conformal metric can be constructed such that the four-dimensional eikonal equation holds. One can show that this structure is invariant under contact transformations. The result presented here for the one-parameter families of solutions of the eikonal equation in four dimensions could be generalized for arbitrary dimension. As a particular case the results are specified for the Minkowski spacetime. The reviewer would like to recommend to the authors to use different notations for coordinate indexes and metric indexes.