Complex surfaces and null conformal Killing vector fields

Abstract

We study the relation between the existence of null conformal Killing vector fields and existence of compatible complex and para-hypercomplex structures on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold with metric of signature (2,2). We establish first the topological types of pseudo-Hermitian surfaces admitting a nowhere vanishing null vector field. Then we show that a pair of orthogonal, pointwise linearly independent, null, conformal Killing vector fields defines a para-hyperhermitian structure and use this fact for a classification of the smooth compact four-manifolds admitting such a pair of vector fields. We also provide examples of neutral metrics with two orthogonal, pointwise linearly independent, null Killing vector fields on most of these manifolds.