Compact symplectic solvmanifolds not admitting complex structures (Q916105)

The authors exhibit a family of 4-dimensional compact solvmanifolds such that each member in the family has a symplectic structure but none carries positive definite Kähler metrics (compatible with the symplectic structure or otherwise) and in fact not even a complex structure. This family of examples is very interesting because each member of it satisfies each of the well known topological conditions for a 2n-dimensional compact manifold M to admit a positive definite Kähler metric: (i) the even Betti numbers are nonzero; (ii) the odd Betti numbers are even; (iii) \(b_ i(M)\geq b_{i-2}(M)\), \(1\leq i\leq n\); (iv) M has the strong Lefschetz property; (v) the minimal model of M is formal. Furthermore, the manifolds in this family are parallelizable so that \textit{A. van de Ven}'s obstructions [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 55, 1624-1627 (1966; Zbl 0144.210)] are insufficient to prove the nonexistence of a complex structure. The main tool used in the proof is \textit{S.-T. Yau}'s classification of compact complex surfaces with trivial tangent bundle [Topology 15, 51-53 (1976; Zbl 0331.32013)], which in turn depends on Kodaira's classification of complex surfaces. Thus Kodaira's classification gives rise to obstructions for a complex structure other than those of van de Ven or those used by the present authors and \textit{M. Gotay} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 103, No.4, 1209-1212 (1988; Zbl 0656.53034)] and expressed in terms of Massey products.