About a family of ALF instantons with conical singularities (Q6085579)

In an earlier paper [Commun. Math. Phys. 399, No. 1, 389--422 (2023; Zbl 1512.53031)], the authors classified a type of four-manifold which they called toric Hermitian ALF gravitational instantons. These are complete but non-compact, oriented and Ricci-flat Riemannian four-manifolds which furthermore have the following properties: (1) They admit an effective, isometric action of the two-torus (toric); (2) They admit a compatible complex structure (Hermitian) and are in fact conformally Kähler (but not Kähler); (3) They are ``diffeomorphic at infinity'' to a product \(\mathbb R\times L\), where \(L\) is locally an \(S^1\)-bundle over \(S^2\) (asymptotically locally flat, ALF). If \(L=S^2\times S^1\), the space is called asymptotically flat. This class of Riemannian manifold includes, but is not exhausted by, the Riemannian analogues of several famous Lorentzian spacetimes like the Schwartzschild and Kerr metrics and the self-dual Taub-NUT space. In this paper, the authors extend the methods of [loc. cit.] to allow for certain conical singularities, resulting in what they call regular metrics with singularities. They then apply this machinery to study the 4-parameter family of toric ALF Ricci-flat metrics (with singularities) called the Chen-Teo family. This family includes a 1-parameter subfamily of smooth toric Hermitian ALF gravitational instantons; the rest of the family is not smooth. The main goal of the paper is to establish which of the non-smooth metrics in the Chen-Teo family are at least regular and to describe their boundaries at infinity. After invoking their earlier results to reduce these problems to questions about certain convex, piecewise affine functions on \(\mathbb R\), the authors derive their results via lengthy calculations.