Lorentzian manifolds with shearfree congruences and Kähler-Sasaki geometry

Title
Lorentzian manifolds with shearfree congruences and Kähler-Sasaki geometry
Publication Date
2021-04
Author(s)
Alekseevsky, Dmitri V
Ganji, Masoud
Schmalz, Gerd
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6141-9329
Email: schmalz@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:schmalz
Spiro, Andrea
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Elsevier BV, North-Holland
Place of publication
Netherlands
DOI
10.1016/j.difgeo.2021.101724
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/31824
Abstract

We study Lorentzian manifolds (M, g) of dimension n ≥4, equipped with a maximally twisting shearfree null vector field p, for which the leaf space S = M/{exptp}is a smooth manifold. If n =2k, the quotient S = M/{exptp} is naturally equipped with a subconformal structure of contact type and, in the most interesting cases, it is a regular Sasaki manifold projecting onto a quantisable Kähler manifold of real dimension 2k - 2. Going backwards through this line of ideas, for any quantisable Kähler manifold with associated Sasaki manifold S, we give the local description of all Lorentzian metrics g on the total spaces M of A-bundles π : MS, A = S1, ℝ, such that the generator of the group action is a maximally twisting shearfree g-null vector field p. We also prove that on any such Lorentzian manifold (M, g)there exists a non-trivial generalised electromagnetic plane wave having p as propagating direction field, a result that can be considered as a generalisation of the classical 4-dimensional Robinson Theorem. We finally construct a 2-parametric family of Einstein metrics on a trivial bundle M = ℝ × S for any prescribed value of the Einstein constant. If dim M = 4, the Ricci flat metrics obtained in this way are the well-known Taub-NUT metrics.

Link
Citation
Differential Geometry and its Applications, v.75, p. 1-32
ISSN
1872-6984
0926-2245
Start page
1
End page
32

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