2 research outputs found
Anti-self-dual conformal structures with null Killing vectors from projective structures
Using twistor methods, we explicitly construct all local forms of
four--dimensional real analytic neutral signature anti--self--dual conformal
structures with a null conformal Killing vector. We show that is
foliated by anti-self-dual null surfaces, and the two-dimensional leaf space
inherits a natural projective structure. The twistor space of this projective
structure is the quotient of the twistor space of by the group action
induced by the conformal Killing vector.
We obtain a local classification which branches according to whether or not
the conformal Killing vector is hyper-surface orthogonal in . We give
examples of conformal classes which contain Ricci--flat metrics on compact
complex surfaces and discuss other conformal classes with no Ricci--flat
metrics.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figures. Theorem 2 has been improved: ASD metrics are
given in terms of general projective structures without needing to choose
special representatives of the projective connection. More examples (primary
Kodaira surface, neutral Fefferman structure) have been included. Algebraic
type of the Weyl tensor has been clarified. Final version, to appear in
Commun Math Phy
Twistor geometry of a pair of second order ODEs
We discuss the twistor correspondence between path geometries in three
dimensions with vanishing Wilczynski invariants and anti-self-dual conformal
structures of signature . We show how to reconstruct a system of ODEs
with vanishing invariants for a given conformal structure, highlighting the
Ricci-flat case in particular. Using this framework, we give a new derivation
of the Wilczynski invariants for a system of ODEs whose solution space is
endowed with a conformal structure. We explain how to reconstruct the conformal
structure directly from the integral curves, and present new examples of
systems of ODEs with point symmetry algebra of dimension four and greater which
give rise to anti--self--dual structures with conformal symmetry algebra of the
same dimension. Some of these examples are analogues of plane wave
space--times in General Relativity. Finally we discuss a variational principle
for twistor curves arising from the Finsler structures with scalar flag
curvature.Comment: Final version to appear in the Communications in Mathematical
Physics. The procedure of recovering a system of torsion-fee ODEs from the
heavenly equation has been clarified. The proof of Prop 7.1 has been
expanded. Dedicated to Mike Eastwood on the occasion of his 60th birthda