Zeros of conformal fields in any metric signature Andrzej Derdzinski Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. The connected components of the zero set of any conformal vector field, in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of arbitrary signature, are shown to be totally umbilical conifold varieties, that is, smooth submanifolds except possibly for some quadric singularities. The singularities occur only when the metric is indefinite, including the Lorentzian case. This generalizes an analogous result for Riemannian manifolds, due to Belgun, Moroianu and Ornea (2010). AMS classification scheme numbers: 53B30 1. Introduction A vector field v on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold (M; g) of dimension n ≥ 2 is called conformal if, for some function φ : M ! IR, $vg = φg; that is; in coordinates; vj;k + vk;j = φgjk : (1) One then obviously has div v = nφ/2. The class of conformal vector fields on (M; g) includes Killing fields v, characterized by (1) with φ = 0. Kobayashi [15] showed that, for any Killing vector field v on a Riemannian manifold (M; g), the connected components of the zero set of v are mutually isolated totally geodesic submanifolds of even codimensions. Assuming compactness of M, Blair [5] established an analogue of Kobayashi's theorem for conformal vector fields, in which the word `geodesic' is replaced by `umbilical' and the codimension clause is relaxed for one-point connected components. Very recently, Belgun, Moroianu and Ornea [4] proved that Blair's conclusion is valid in the noncompact case as well. The last result is also a direct consequence of a theorem of Frances [12] stating that a conformal field on a Riemannian manifold is linearizable at any zero z unless some neighborhood of z is conformally flat.