Ambient constructions for Sasakian $\eta$-Einstein manifolds

Abstract

The theory of ambient spaces is useful to define CR invariant objects, such as CR invariant powers of the sub-Laplacian, the $P$-prime operators, and $Q$-prime curvature. However in general, it is difficult to write down these objects in terms of the Tanaka-Webster connection. In this paper, we give those explicit formulas for CR manifolds satisfying an Einstein condition, called Sasakian $\eta$-Einstein manifolds. As an application, we study properties of the first and the second variation of the total $Q$-prime curvature at Sasakian $\eta$-Einstein manifolds.