Twistor forms on Riemannian products (Q950233)

A \(p\)-form \(\varphi\) on a Riemannian manifold \(M\) of dimension \(n\) is called a twistor \(p\)-form if it satisfies the differential equation \[ \nabla_X \varphi = \frac{1}{p+1}\;\iota_Xd\varphi -\frac{1}{n-p+1}\;\varepsilon_X \delta \varphi \] for all vector fields \(X\). Here \(\iota_X, \varepsilon_X\) denote the interior and exterior product with \(X\), respectively. Coclosed twistor forms are called Killing forms. Twistor one-forms correspond to conformal vector fields under the isomorphism \(T^*M\cong TM\) induced by the Riemannian metric. Similarly, Killing forms correspond to Killing vector fields. The authors prove that any twistor form on a Riemannian product \(M=M_1\times M_2\) of two compact Riemannian manifolds (of positive dimension) is a sum of the following forms: parallel forms, Killing forms on the factors, Hodge duals of Killing forms on the factors. Together with previous results this finishes the classification of compact Riemannian manifolds of nongeneric holonomy admitting a nonzero twistor form. As an application they prove that a compact simply connected Riemannian manifold which admits a conformal vector field which is not Killing has holonomy group \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\).