Related papers: On geometry of congruences of null strings in 4-di…

The supersymmetric solutions of N=2, D=4 minimal ungauged and gauged supergravity are classified according to the fraction of preserved supersymmetry using spinorial geometry techniques. Subject to a reasonable assumption in the…

Restrictions are obtained on the topology of a compact divergence-free null hypersurface in a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold whose Ricci tensor is zero or satisfies some weaker conditions. This is done by showing that each null…

We study geometric structures associated with shear-free null geodesic congruences in Minkowski space-time and asymptotically shear-free null geodesic congruences in asymptotically flat space-times. We show how in both the flat and…

We study the geometry and holonomy of semi-Riemannian, time-like metric cones that are indecomposable, i.e., which do not admit a local decomposition into a semi-Riemannian product. This includes irreducible cones, for which the holonomy…

We give a coordinate-free description of real manifolds occurring in certain four dimensional supergravity theories with antisymmetric tensor fields. The relevance of the linear multiplets in the compactification of string and five-brane…

A representation of generalized Weierstrass formulae for an immersion of generic surfaces into a 4-dimensional complex space in terms of spinors treated as minimal left ideals of Clifford algebras is proposed. The relation between…

We use techniques based on the splitting tensor to explicitly integrate the Codazzi equation along the relative nullity distribution and express the second fundamental form in terms of the Jacobi tensor of the ambient space. This approach…

Optical (or Robinson) structures are one generalisation of four-dimensional shearfree congruences of null geodesics to higher dimensions. They are Lorentzian analogues of complex and CR structures. In this context, we extend the…

We define string geometry: spaces of superstrings including the interactions, their topologies, charts, and metrics. Trajectories in asymptotic processes on a space of strings reproduce the right moduli space of the super Riemann surfaces…

The search for a geometrical understanding of dualities in string theory, in particular T-duality, has led to the development of modern T-duality covariant frameworks such as Double Field Theory, whose mathematical structure can be…

In this lecture I summarize recent developments on strings propagating in curved spacetime. Exact conformal field theories that describe gravitational backgrounds such as black holes and more intricate gravitational singularities have been…

Solutions of five-dimensional De Sitter supergravity admitting Killing spinors are considered, using spinorial geometry techniques. It is shown that the "null" solutions are defined in terms of a one parameter family of 3-dimensional…

Two-dimensional sigma-models describing superstrings propagating on manifolds of special holonomy are characterized by symmetries related to covariantly constant forms that these manifolds hold, which are generally non-linear and close in a…

In this paper we investigate whether the holographic principle proposed in string theory has a classical counterpart in general relativity theory. We show that there is a partial correspondence: at least in the case of vacuum Petrov type D…

It is well-known that unlike space-like and time-like hypersurfaces, null hypersurfaces in Lorentzian manifolds do not naturally inherit an affine connection from the spacetime in which they are embedded. On the other hand, recent…

Holonomy algebras of Lorentzian Weyl spin manifolds with weighted parallel spinors are found. For Lorentzian Weyl manifolds admitting recurrent null vector fields are introduced special local coordinates similar to Kundt and Walker ones.…

We study the relation between the existence of null conformal Killing vector fields and existence of compatible complex and para-hypercomplex structures on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold with metric of signature (2,2). We establish first the…

We present the complete family of higher dimensional spacetimes that admit a geodesic, shearfree, twistfree and expanding null congruence, thus extending the well-known D=4 class of Robinson-Trautman solutions. Einstein's equations are…

We give explicit bijective correspondences between three families of objects: certain pairs of quaternions, which we regard as spinors; certain flags in (1+4)-dimensional Minkowski space; and horospheres in 4-dimensional hyperbolic space…

We introduce and study the notion of null manifold. This is a smooth manifold ${\mathcal N}$ endowed with a degenerate metric $\gamma$ with one-dimensional radical at every point. We also define the notion of ruled null manifold, which is a…