Self-Dual Conformal Gravity

Abstract

We find necessary and sufficient conditions for a Riemannian four-dimensional manifold (M, g) with anti-self-dual Weyl tensor to be locally conformal to a Ricci-flat manifold. These conditions are expressed as the vanishing of scalar and tensor conformal invariants. The invariants obstruct the existence of parallel sections of a certain connection on a complex rank-four vector bundle over M. They provide a natural generalisation of the Bach tensor which vanishes identically for anti-self-dual conformal structures. We use the obstructions to demonstrate that LeBrun’s anti-self-dual metrics on connected sums of $${\mathbb{CP}^2}$$ s are not conformally Ricci-flat on any open set. We analyze both Riemannian and neutral signature metrics. In the latter case we find all anti-self-dual metrics with a parallel real spinor which are locally conformal to Einstein metrics with non-zero cosmological constant. These metrics admit a hyper-surface orthogonal null Killing vector and thus give rise to projective structures on the space of β-surfaces.