The Hermitian Laplace operator on nearly Kähler manifolds (Q625445)

Let \((M,g,J)\) be an almost Hermitian manifold; here, \(g\) is a Riemannian metric and \(J\) is an almost complex structure on \(M\) with \(J^*g=g\). The structure is said to be nearly Kähler if \((\nabla_XJ)X=0\) for all tangent vectors. The authors examine 6 dimensional nearly Kähler manifolds which are not Kähler; these are necessarily Einstein and the authors normalize the scalar curvature to 30. Thus, \(M\) carries a natural \(SU_3\) connection. Let \(\Delta\) be the usual Laplace operator and let \(\bar\Delta\) be the Hermitian Laplace operator. The authors use \(\bar\Delta\) to study the moduli space \(NK\) of infinitesimal deformations of the nearly Kähler structure. They show the nearly Kähler structure is rigid except for the flag manifold \(F(1,2)=SU_3/T^2\) which carries an \(8\)-dimensional moduli space which is modeled on the Lie algebra \(su_3\) of the isometry group.