Symmetries of almost complex structures and pseudoholomorphic foliations

Abstract

Generically an almost complex structure has no symmetries at all, but there exist symmetric structures. In this paper we describe how to guarantee that the pseudogroup of local symmetries is small (finite-dimensional). It will be indicated that a large symmetry pseudogroup (infinite-dimensional) is a signature of some integrable structure, like a pseudoholomorphic foliation. We are mostly concerned with almost complex structures in dimensions 4 and 6, where we classify the sub-maximal symmetric structures, and we briefly discuss the higher dimensions. For non-degenerate almost complex structures we give an estimate on the dimension of the automorphism group.