1. Introduction
In complex differential geometry, connections characterize the local properties of a manifold and determine its torsion, curvature, and global topological invariants. Therefore, the selection of a connection is important for studying the intrinsic geometric structure and analytic properties of the manifold. In general, non-Kähler geometry, there are two important classes of connections: the Chern connection and the Bismut connection.
If a complex manifold is endowed with a Hermitian metric, it may be viewed as a Riemannian manifold, and the Levi-Civita connection can be introduced accordingly. However, on a non-Kähler manifold, the Levi-Civita connection fails to preserve the complex structure. Therefore, on non-Kähler manifolds, the Chern connection and the Bismut connection are commonly considered.
The torsion of a connection plays an important role in geometry. It also gives several significant problems in non-Kähler geometry, such as the balanced condition, the pluriclosed condition, Gauduchon metrics, conformal invariants of the connection 1-form, and variational problems for critical metrics. In particular, the connection 1-form provides a method to determine whether a Hermitian metric is balanced or conformally balanced, and for a Gauduchon metric, the corresponding connection 1-form is co-closed [1]. Ganchev and Ivanov investigated the role of the connection 1-form on the existence and holomorphicity of harmonic 1-forms on compact balanced manifolds [2].
Prompted by problems in theoretical physics, Li and Yau provided a rigorous mathematical proof for the existence of solutions to the Strominger system, showing that certain non-Kähler manifolds admit torsion structures satisfying supersymmetry conditions [3]. In recent years, the Bismut connection and its curvature properties have attracted considerable attention. Andrada and Villacampa studied the Bismut connection on Vaisman manifolds and the related geometric structures, and characterized the corresponding holonomy group structures [4]. Barbaro established that, under appropriate conditions, a Hermitian metric with constant Bismut scalar curvature exists [5].
2. Preliminaries
An
-dimensional complex manifold
is a smooth manifold of real dimension
together with a holomorphic atlas
of
and
. The transition map
is holomorphic.
Let
be an
-dimensional complex manifold with tangent bundle
. Since
and any biholomorphic map is necessarily a diffeomorphism,
can also be considered as a smooth real manifold of real dimension
, which we denote by
. The complex structure on the real manifold induces a decomposition of the complexified tangent bundle
(2.1)
It endows
with the structure of a complex vector space. This decomposition induces a corresponding decomposition of complex-valued differential form and leads naturally to
-form.
By extending the complex structure to
, we obtain
(2.2)
where
and
denote the holomorphic and anti-holomorphic tangent spaces. Let
be local holomorphic coordinates on an open set
, with
. Let
be smooth real local coordinates, and denote
Then local frames for
and
are
and
, respectively. The dual space of the tangent bundle is denoted by
, and it likewise decomposes as
(2.3)
Local frames for
and
are given by
and
.
On a complex manifold
, a
-form
can be locally decomposed as
(2.4)
which is denoted as
We define
to be the space of
-forms on
. Any element
can be locally expressed as
(2.5)
The exterior differential
defined on a smooth manifold naturally extends to an
-dimensional complex manifold, where it satisfies
Consequently, we can define two differential operators on
(2.6)
Locally, they have the expressions
(2.7)
Since the operator
satisfies
, it defines a cochain complex
The cohomology of the sequence is called the Dolbeault cohomology:
In particular, there exists the following isomorphism
where
is the sheaf of holomorphic functions on
. These groups measure the obstruction to the
-equation solved on
-forms and constitute fundamental invariants of the complex manifold
.
3. Hermitian Structure
Consider the holomorphic tangent bundle
of a complex manifold
. For any
, a positive definite Hermitian form
is given by
(3.1)
satisfying
for all
. In a local frame
, let the components of
by
where
is a smooth function on
. Let the local holomorphic coordinates be
and the Hermitian metric can be expressed locally as
(3.2)
where
is a smooth section of , satisfying
1) Hermitian symmetry,
;
2) For any nonzero vector
,
.
A Hermitian metric can be defined locally, for example by pulling back the standard Hermitian metric from
. These local metrics can be patched together via a partition of unity subordinate to the atlas, thereby obtaining a global Hermitian metric.
Theorem 3.1. [6] Any
-dimensional complex manifold
admits a Hermitian metric.
This fundamental fact shows that Hermitian geometry is always available on complex manifolds.
The Kähler form
with respect to
has the following local coordinate form
(3.3)
Remark. If
, then
is called a Kähler manifold, and any submanifold of
is also a Kähler manifold.
Consider the set of complex lines through the origin on
. The complex projective space is defined as
where
are equivalent,
, if there exists
such that
. Elements of
are denoted by homogeneous coordinates
. The projective space can be covered by
standard open sets
On
, we define affine coordinates
Consider the map on
The transition map is
Hence,
is a complex manifold.
Proposition 3.2. [6] The complex projective space is a Kähler manifold.
The projective manifold is a class of complex manifolds, and it is shown in [7] that compact Kähler manifolds with positive bisectional curvature are projective.
Similarly, we equip
with a Hermitian metric. On a compact Hermitian manifold for any
, we define an inner product at each point
(3.4)
The metric for
and
is given by
(3.5)
where
, we denote
.
A complex manifold is automatically orientable. Intuitively, this property arises from the fact that holomorphic coordinate changes preserve the natural orientation of the underlying real 2n-dimensional space. It distinguishes complex manifolds from smooth manifolds that fail to be orientable.
On an
-dimensional Hermitian manifold
, there exists a linear map
satisfying the following
(3.6)
for
. By the
-linear extension, it satisfies
for
. Let
be a compact manifold. Based on (2.6), (3.4) and (3.5), the dual operator is defined as
(3.7)
It is easy to see that
A special class of Hermitian manifolds is the balanced Hermitian manifolds, i.e., Hermitian manifolds with coclosed Kähler forms. Moreover, every Kähler manifold is balanced. In higher dimensions, there exist non-Kähler manifolds which admit balanced Hermitian metrics [8].
4. Main Results
The Chern connection
is the unique connection which is compatible with the complex structure and also the Hermitian metric.
Let
be a Chern connection. The torsion tensor of
is defined as
(4.1)
It is easy to see that
is a (1,2)-tensor, with components
defined by
denoted by
.
Proposition 4.1. Let
be a Hermitian manifold. The following equation between the Kähler form and the torsion coefficients holds:
(4.2)
Proof. By (2.7) and (3.3), we obtain
From
, it gives
This completes the proof.
It follows from (4.2) that if
is torsion-free, then
is a Kähler manifold. The connection 1-form on
is given by
(4.3)
where
. In particular, by choosing a unitary frame
, we have
The linear map
is called the Lefschetz operator is defined by
Its dual is given by
Proposition 4.2. Let
be an
-dimensional Hermitian manifold with
-closed. Then
(4.4)
where
. If
is compact, we have
(4.5)
Proof. we denote
By the dual operator
, it follows that
(4.6)
Thus
Substituting into (4.6), we can easily obtain
Using the Leibniz property of
and the duality of
, it gives
which proves (4.4). From (3.6), we get
By Hermitian symmetry and the duality of
, we have
(4.7)
In particular, we have
(4.8)
The second equality of (4.8) follows from integration by parts. Therefore, (4.5) can be derived from (4.7) and (4.8).
The metric
is called an
-Gauduchon metric for
if it satisfies
A classical result of Gauduchon states that within any conformal class of a Hermitian metric on a compact complex manifold, there exists a Gauduchon metric, which is unique up to normalization. By Proposition 4.2, we have the following corollary.
Corollary 4.3. Let
be an
-dimensional Hermitian manifold with
-closed. If
is an
-Gauduchon metric, we have
(4.9)
Proof. By integration by parts, it follows that
Under the Gauduchon condition (4.5) vanishes, which proves (4.9).
In general, the fundamental 2-form
is not necessarily closed, and the extent to which the manifold deviates from the Kähler condition can be described by the connection 1-form. Moreover, it is closely related to the topology of Hermitian manifolds, and we refer to [9].
(4.9) presents a quantitative relation between
and
, providing a tool to verify whether a metric satisfies the balanced or pluriclosed condition. If
, the manifold satisfies the pluriclosed condition; if
, the manifold is balanced. (4.9) holds under the
-Gauduchon condition, but the validity of (4.9) does not necessarily imply the
-Gauduchon condition. Consider the left-hand side of (4.5). If
, then
is an
-Gauduchon metric if and only if it is a 1-Gauduchon metric.
5. Conclusions
describes the length of
, and
is defined analogously.
measures the component of
in the direction of
. The integral on the left-hand side of (4.5) characterizes the extent to which the manifold deviates from the Kähler condition. Moreover, the study of higher-degree differential forms can be reduced to that of lower-degree forms via integration. Equation (4.5) shows that the global integral obtained by applying the (1, 0) and (0, 1)-directions to the Kähler form decomposes into inner products of lower-degree forms and is independent of the integral on the (1, 0)-direction.
In some cases, the
represents Dolbeault or Bott-Chern cohomology classes. These identities can be used to relate differential forms to global invariants, for example, to compute obstructions to the existence of Kähler metrics and to study dimension inequalities between Dolbeault cohomology groups. Moreover, it is possible to apply these identities to the Chern-Ricci flow or the pluriclosed flow.