The qc Yamabe problem on non-spherical quaternionic contact manifolds

DOI10.1016/J.MATPUR.2018.06.011MaRDI QIDQ1782002zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Stefan Ivanov, Alexander Petkov

Publication date 18 September 2018

Published in Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées. Neuvième Série (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.02406

zbMATH Keywords

quaternionic contact structures quaternionic contact Yamabe functional

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Semilinear elliptic equations (35J61) PDEs on manifolds (35R01) Contact manifolds (general theory) (53D10)

Abstract: It is shown that the qc Yamabe problem has a solution on any compact qc manifold which is non-locally qc equivalent to the standard 3-Sasakian sphere. Namely, it is proved that on a compact non-locally spherical qc manifold there exists a qc conformal qc structure with constant qc scalar curvature

Review text

A quaternionic contact (qc) manifold \((M,g,\mathbb Q)\) is a \(4n+3\)-dimensional manifold \(M\) with a codimension three distribution \(H\), locally given as the kernel of an \(\mathbb R^3\)-valued 1-form \(\eta=\eta_{_1}\times\eta_{_2}\times\eta_{_3}\), that is equipped with a Riemannian metric \(g\) and a rank-three bundle \(\mathbb Q\) consisting of endomorphisms of \(H\) locally generated by three almost complex structures \(I_i\), \(i=1,2,3\), on \(H\) satisfying the identities of the imaginary unit quaternions. If \(g\) is a fixed metric in the conformal class \([g]\) on \(H\), then there exists a unique linear connection \(\nabla\) preserving the qc structure for every metric in the conformal class \([g]\), this is called the Biquard connection. The qc Yamabe problem on a compact qc manifold M is the problem of finding a metric \(\overline g\in [g]\) on \(H\) for which the qc-scalar curvature is constant. The question reduces to the solvability of the qc Yamabe equation \[ {\mathcal{L}}f=4\frac{Q+2}{Q-2}\Delta f-fS=-f^{2^*-1}\overline S, \] where \(\Delta\) is the sub-Laplacian, \(\Delta f=\text{tr}^g(\nabla^2f)\), \(S\) and \(\overline S\) are the qc-scalar curvatures correspondingly of \((M,\eta)\) and \(\left(M,\overline\eta=f^{4/(Q-2)}\eta\right)\), where \(2^*=\frac{2Q}{Q-2}\), with \(Q=4n+6\)-the homogeneous dimension. If \((M,[\eta])\) is a qc manifold with a fixed conformal class defined by a qc contact form \(\eta\), then the solutions to the qc Yamabe problem are critical points of the qc Yamabe functional \[ {\mathcal{Y}}_M(\eta)=\frac{\int\limits_MS\text{Vol}_\eta}{\left(\int\limits_M\text{Vol}_\eta\right)^{2/2^*}}, \] where \(\text{Vol}_\eta\) is the natural volume form associated to the contact form \(\eta\), and \(2^*=\frac{2n+3}{n+1}\). The qc Yamabe constant is defined by \(\lambda(M)=\lambda(M,[\eta])=\inf\limits_\eta{\mathcal{Y}}_M(\eta)\). In [``The qc Yamabe problem on 3-Sasakian manifolds and the quaternionic Heisenberg group, Preprint, \url{arXiv:1504.03142}], \textit{S. Ivanov} et al. studied the qc Yamabe problem on 3-Sasakian manifolds and calculated the qc Yamabe constant on the standard unit 3-Sasakian sphere \(S^{4n+3}\) to be \[ \Lambda=\lambda(S^{4n+3})=\frac{16n(n+2)2^{\frac1{2n+3}}}{(2n+1)^{\frac1{2n+3}}}\pi^{\frac{2n+2}{2n+3}}. \] In this paper, the authors consider the qc Yamabe problem on non-spherical qc manifolds. They show that if \(M\) is a compact qc manifold of dimension \(4n+3\) and \(M\) is not locally qc equivalent to the standard 3-Sasakian structure on the sphere \(S^{4n+3}\), then \(\lambda(M)<\Lambda\), and thus the qc Yamabe problem can be solved on \(M\).

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