Anti-self-dual four–manifolds with a parallel real spinor

Abstract

Anti-self-dual metrics in the $(++--)$ signature which admit a covariantly constant real spinor are studied. It is shown that finding such metrics reduces to solving a fourth order integrable PDE, and some examples are given. The corresponding twistor space is characterised by existence of a preferred non-zero real section of $\kappa^{-1/4}$, where $\kappa$ is the canonical line bundle of the twistor space It is demonstrated that if the parallel spinor is preserved by a Killing vector, then the fourth order PDE reduces to the dispersionless Kadomtsev--Petviashvili equation and its linearisation. Einstein--Weyl structures on the space of trajectories of the symmetry are characterised by the existence of a parallel weighted null vector.