English

Killing 2-forms in dimension 4

Differential Geometry 2019-01-08 v1

Abstract

A Killing pp-form on a Riemannian manifold is a pp-form whose covariant derivative is totally anti-symmetric. In this paper we give the complete (local) description of 4-dimensional Riemannian manifolds (M,g) carrying non-parallel Killing 2-forms φ\varphi. If MM is connected and oriented, we show that there exists a dense open subset of MM on which one of the three exclusive situations holds: either ϕ\phi is everywhere degenerate and gg is conformal to a product metric, or gg is conformal to an ambik\"ahler metric obtained via the Calabi construction from a polarized Riemannian surface, or gg is conformal to an ambitoric structure of hyperbolic type, and depends locally on two functions of one variable. We also give compact examples, by constructing infinite-dimensional families of Riemannian metrics carrying Killing 2-forms of each of the above types on S4S^4 and on Hirzebruch surfaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1506.04292,
  title  = {Killing 2-forms in dimension 4},
  author = {Paul Gauduchon and Andrei Moroianu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04292},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

36 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:53:08.714Z