Coassociative cones ruled by 2-planes (Q929267)

Coassociative 4-folds in \(\mathbb{R}^7\) were introduced by \textit{R. Harvey} and \textit{H. B. Lawson} as an example of a calibrated geometry [see Acta Math. 148, 47--157 (1982; Zbl 0584.53021)]. One way to simplify the coassociative equations is to assume that the 4-fold admits a ruling. In this paper, the author shows that coassociative cones in \(\mathbb{R}^7\) that are \(r\)-oriented and are equivalent by 2-planes to CR-holomorphic curves in the oriented Grassmannian of 2-planes in \(\mathbb{R}^7\) (Proposition 7.2). The geometry of these CR-holomorphic curves is studied and related to holomorphic curves in \(S^6\). This leads to a bijection between the associative cones and the coassociative cones whose fundamental forms have an \(O(2)\)-stabilizer. It also provides some methods for explicitly constructing coassociative 4-folds. One method leads to a family of coassociative 4-folds whose members are neither cones nor are ruled by 2-planes, which directly generalizes the original family of examples provided by Harvey and Lawson.