Conformal holonomy, symmetric spaces, and skew symmetric torsion

TL;DR

This paper investigates the realization of isotropy representations of irreducible pseudo-Riemannian symmetric spaces as conformal holonomy groups, providing classifications and non-existence results in various signatures and geometries.

Contribution

It classifies irreducible conformal holonomy groups in Lorentzian signature and identifies geometric structures associated with specific holonomy reductions, extending previous results.

Findings

Conformal manifolds with SO(2,1) holonomy are always locally conformally flat.

Manifolds with PSU(2,1) holonomy carry a nearly para-Kaehler metric on an open dense subset.

Manifolds with PSp(2,1) holonomy admit a canonical Einstein metric in the conformal class.

Abstract

We consider the question: can the isotropy representation of an irreducible pseudo-Riemannian symmetric space be realized as a conformal holonomy group? Using recent results of Cap, Gover and Hammerl, we study the representations of SO(2,1), PSU(2,1) and PSp(2,1) as isotropy groups of irreducible symmetric spaces of signature (3,2), (4,4) and (6,8), respectively, describing the geometry induced by a conformal holonomy reduction to the corresponding subgroups. In the case of SO(2,1) we show that conformal manifolds with such a holonomy reduction are always locally conformally flat and hence this group cannot be a conformal holonomy group. This result completes the classification of irreducible conformal holonomy groups in Lorentzian signature. In the case of PSU(2,1), we show that conformal manifolds of signature (3,3) with this holonomy reduction carry, on an open dense subset, a canonical nearly para-Kaehler metric with positive Einstein constant. For PSp(2,1) we also show that there is an open dense subset endowed with a canonical Einstein metric in the conformal class. As a result, after restricting to an open dense subset the conformal holonomy must be a proper subgroup of PSU(2,1) or of PSp(2,1), respectively. Finally, using a recent result of Graham and Willse we prove the following general non-existence result: for a real-analytic, odd-dimensional conformal manifold, the conformal holonomy group can never be given by the isotropy representation of an irreducible pseudo-Riemannian symmetric space unless the isotropy is SO(p+1,q+1).