arXiv research

In this short note, we review the well-known result that there is no orthogonal complex structure on the 6-sphere with respect to the round metric.

We discuss two kinds of almost contact metric structures on a one-parameter family of totally umbilical hyperspheres in the nearly Kaehler unit 6-sphere.

This article sets out to serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, we give an explicit description of the Lagrangian submanifolds of the nearly Kaehler 6-sphere which are ruled by circles of constant radius using Weierstrass formulae. On the other, we recognise all previous known examples of these Lagrangians as being rul…

Study on null-torsion holomorphic curves in 6-sphere, focusing on their second variation.

In 2003, S.-s. Chern began a study of almost-complex structures on the 6-sphere, with the idea of exploiting the special properties of its well-known almost-complex structure invariant under the exceptional group $G_2$. While he did not solve the (currently still open) problem of determining whether there exists an int…

Study on holomorphic curves in 6-sphere with boundary conditions.

The paper studies twisted almost Hermitian structures on the 6-sphere.

For smooth embeddings of an integral homology 3-sphere in the 6-sphere, we define an integer invariant in terms of their Seifert surfaces. Our invariant gives a bijection between the set of smooth isotopy classes of such embeddings and the integers. It also gives rise to a complete invariant for homology bordism classe…

Complex manifolds can only map to curves, restricting Clemens threefolds and $S^6$.

Study shows why 6-sphere cannot be hermitian.

The possible existence of a complex structure on the 6-sphere has been a famous unsolved problem for over 60 years. In that time many "solutions" have been put forward, in both directions. Mistakes have always been found. In this paper I present a short proof of the non-existence, based on ideas developed, but not full…

There is a rich theory of so-called (strict) nearly Kaehler manifolds, almost-Hermitian manifolds generalising the famous almost complex structure on the 6-sphere induced by octonionic multiplication. Nearly Kaehler 6-manifolds play a distinguished role both in the general structure theory and also because of their con…

Study shows a copy of 7D real projective space in the space of almost complex structures on 6-sphere.

Using spinning we analyze in a geometric way Haefliger's smoothly knotted (4k-1)-spheres in the 6k-sphere. Consider the 2-torus standardly embedded in the 3-sphere, which is further standardly embedded in the 6-sphere. At each point of the 2-torus we have the normal disk pair: a 4-dimensional disk and a 1-dimensional p…

The nearly Kähler structures on the 6-sphere, as a twistor bundle sections are researched. We show that for any point of twistor bundle there exists an 1-parametric family of sections, passing through the point, which give nearly Kähler structures on the round sphere. Some properties of those sections are found.

This paper surveys some of the known results on $δ$-ideal CR submanifolds in complex space forms, the nearly Kähler $6$-sphere and odd dimensional unit spheres. In addition, the relationship between $δ$-ideal CR submanifolds and critical points of the $λ$-bienergy is mentioned. Some topics on variational problem for th…

I review several proofs for non-existence of orthogonal complex structures on the six-sphere, most notably by G. Bor and L. Hernandez-Lamoneda, but also by K. Sekigawa and L. Vanhecke that we generalize for metrics close to the round one. Invited talk at MAM-1 workshop, 27-30 March 2017, Marburg.

For $n \geq 1$, the twistor space $\mathfrak{Z}(\mathbb{S}^{2n})$ of the conformal $2n$-sphere is biholomorphic to the Zariski closure, taken in the complex Grassmannian manifold $\mathbf{G}(n+1, 2n+2)$, of the set of graphs of skew-symmetric linear endomorphism of $\mathbb{C}^{n+1}$. We use this fact to describe a nat…

In this article, we use the harmonic sequence associated to a weakly conformal harmonic map $f:S\to S^6$ in order to determine explicit examples of linearly full almost complex 2-spheres of $S^6$ with at most two singularities. We prove that the singularity type of these almost complex 2-spheres has an extra symmetry a…

For any complex affine reductive group G and a fixed choice of maximal compact subgroup K, we show that the G-character variety of a free group strongly deformation retracts to the corresponding K-character space, which is a real semi-algebraic set. Combining this with constructive invariant theory and classical topolo…

Classifies circle actions on 6D manifolds with 4 fixed points.

We study the eleven dimensional supergravity equations which describe a low energy approximation to string theories and are related to M-theory under the AdS/CFT correspondence. These equations take the form of a non-linear differential system, on $\mathbb{B}^7\times\mathbb{S}^4$ with the characteristic degeneracy at t…

We show that a harmonic map from a Riemann surface into the exceptional symmetric space $G_2/{\mathrm SO}(4)$ has a $J_2$-holomorphic twistor lift into one of the three flag manifolds of $G_2$ if and only if it is `nilconformal', i.e., has nilpotent derivative. Then we find relationships with almost complex maps from a…

Only the 6-sphere has constant curvature hypersurfaces in nearly Kähler manifolds.

We identify R^7 as the pure imaginary part of octonions. Then the multiplication in octonions gives a natural almost complex structure for the unit 6-sphere. It is known that a cone over a surface M in S^6 is an associative submanifold of R^7 if and only if M is almost complex in S^6. In this paper, we show that the Ga…

We consider here 6-regular plane graphs whose faces have size 1, 2 or 3. In Section 2 a practical enumeration method is given that allowed us to enumerate them up to 53 vertices. Subsequently, in Section 3 we enumerate all possible symmetry groups of the spheres that showed up. In Section 4 we introduce a new Goldberg-…

Let U be a real form of a complex semisimple Lie group, and tau, sigma, a pair of commuting involutions on U. This data corresponds to a reflective submanifold of a symmetric space, U/K. We define an associated integrable system, and describe how to produce solutions from curved flats. The solutions are shown to corres…

Bott and Taubes constructed knot invariants by integrating differential forms along the fiber of a bundle over the space of knots, generalizing the Gauss linking integral. Their techniques were later used to construct real cohomology classes in spaces of knots and links in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces. In previo…

Associative submanifolds of the 7-sphere S^7 are 3-dimensional minimal submanifolds which are the links of calibrated 4-dimensional cones in R^8 called Cayley cones. Examples of associative 3-folds are thus given by the links of complex and special Lagrangian cones in C^4, as well as Lagrangian submanifolds of the near…

This article is mostly a writeup of two talks, the first given in the Besse Seminar at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1998 and the second given at the 2000 International Congress on Differential Geometry in memory of Alfred Gray in Bilbao, Spain. It begins with a discussion of basic geometry of almost complex 6-manifolds. …

This article is one of three highly influential articles on the topology of manifolds written by Robert D. Edwards in the 1970's but never published. It presents the initial solutions of the fabled Double Suspension Conjecture. (The other two articles are: 'Approximating certain cell-like maps by homeomorphisms' and 'T…