Four-dimensional manifolds with degenerate self-dual Weyl curvature operator (Q944913)

The generalized Goldberg-Sachs theorem states that under some degeneracy conditions on the self-dual Weyl conformal curvature tensor \(W^+\), a four-dimensional Einstein Riemannian metric is Hermitian. This result has been generalized to both Lorentzian and pseudo-Riemannian metrics, assuming some natural degeneracy conditions on \(W^+\), as well as its diagonalizability. Walker metrics prove that the diagonalizability of \(W^+\) is an essential ingredient for this kind of results. In fact, in the paper under review, four-dimensional Walker metrics of nowhere vanishing scalar curvature are considered. They are shown to possess a natural almost para-Hermitian structure. If this structure is self-dual and \(*\)-Einstein, then it is symplectic but not necessarily integrable (indeed, it is so only when it corresponds to a paracomplex space form). Once again, Walker metrics show how and why Riemannian results can not be expected to fully extend to the pseudo-Riemannian framework.