The Fischer-Marsden conjecture and contact geometry

General geometric structures on manifolds (almost complex, almost product structures, etc.) (53C15) Global Riemannian geometry, including pinching (53C20) Special Riemannian manifolds (Einstein, Sasakian, etc.) (53C25)

Review text

Let \((M^n,g)\) be a compact orientable Riemannian manifold. The operator \(\mathcal{L}_g^\ast\) is defined as \[ \mathcal{L}_g^\ast(\lambda)=-(\Delta_g\lambda)g+\operatorname{Hess}_g\lambda-\lambda\operatorname{Ric}_g, \] where \(\Delta_g\) is the negative Laplacian of \(g\), \(\operatorname{Ric}_g\) is its Ricci tensor and \(\operatorname{Hess}_g\lambda(X,Y)=g(\nabla_XD\lambda,Y)\) is the Hessian of the smooth function \(\lambda\) on \(M\). A contact metric manifold \(M^{2n+1}(\phi,\xi,\eta,g)\) is said to be \(K\)-contact if the vector field \(\xi\) is Killing. A \((\kappa,\mu)\)-contact manifold is a contact metric manifold \(M^{2n+1}(\phi,\xi,\eta,g)\) whose curvature tensor satisfies \[ R(X,Y)\xi=\kappa\{\eta(Y)X-\eta(X)Y\}+\mu\{\eta(Y)hX-\eta(X)hY\}\,, \] for all vector fields \(X\), \(Y\) on \(M\) and for some real numbers \(\kappa\), \(\mu\). In the reviewed paper the authors consider the equation \(\mathcal{L}_g^\ast(\lambda)=0\), called the Fischer-Marsden equation, on \(K\)-contact and \((\kappa,\mu)\)-contact manifolds. They prove that a complete \(K\)-contact manifold satisfying \(\mathcal{L}_g^\ast(\lambda)=0\) is Einsteinian and is isometric to a unit sphere \(S^{2n+1}\). Next the authors show that if a non-Sasakian \((\kappa,\mu)\)-contact metric manifold satisfies \(\mathcal{L}_g^\ast(\lambda)=0\) then \(M^3\) is flat, and for \(n>1\), \(M^{2n+1}\) is locally isometric to \(E^{n+1}\times S^n(4)\).

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