Some Penrose transforms in complex differential geometry (Q867814)

In this article, the authors review the Penrose transform and sketch two new applications. The typical geometrical situation giving rise to the transform is given by a complex manifold \(Z\), a space \(M\) parametrising certain compact submanifolds \(L\) of \(Z\) of dimension \(k\) and a holomorphic vector bundle \(V\) on \(Z\). We then have restriction maps \({\mathcal P}:H^k(Z,{\mathcal O}(V))\rightarrow H^k(L,{\mathcal O}(V| _L))\). If we assume that the dimension of the space \(H^k(L,{\mathcal O}(V| _L))\) is constant, we can regard \({\mathcal P}\omega\), for any \(\omega\in H^k(Z,{\mathcal O}(V))\), as a section of a vector bundle over the real or complex manifold \(M\). When \(M\) is complex, one can expect the vector bundle and the section \({\mathcal P}\omega\) to be holomorphic. In the classical version of the transform, \(Z\) is an open subset of \({\mathbb{C} P}^3\) and \(M\) is an open subset of the Grassmannian \(\text{Gr}(2,{\mathbb{C}}^4)\) and we obtain isomorphisms \(H^1(Z,{\mathcal O}(-s-2))\rightarrow\Gamma(M,W)\) for \(s\geq1\) and suitable \(W\), where the space \(\Gamma(M,W)\) is the space of massless fields of helicity \(s/2\). The first application is to describe explicitly the symmetry algebra of these massless fields. The second application concerns projective structures on an open subset \(M\) of \({\mathbb{C}}\subset{\mathbb{C} P}^2\) with \(Z\subset{\mathbb{C} P}^{2*}\) being the open subset spanned by the lines parametrised by \(M\). In this case there is a Penrose transform mapping \(H^1(Z,\Theta)\) isomorphically to \(\Gamma(M,\Omega^1(-3))\); this is the linearised version of Hitchin's twistor description of \(2\)-dimensional projective structures. This situation is related to the geometry of CR structures on \(S^3\), to which one can associate projective structures on the associated parameter space \(M\) by Hitchin's construction. The authors prove that a CR structure on \(S^3\), sufficiently close to the flat structure, is embeddable if and only if the associated projective structure on \(M\) is flat.