Locally conformally product structures

Abstract

A locally conformally product (LCP) structure on compact manifold $M$ is a conformal structure $c$ together with a closed, non-exact and non-flat Weyl connection $D$ with reducible holonomy. Equivalently, an LCP structure on $M$ is defined by a reducible, non-flat, incomplete Riemannian metric $h_D$ on the universal cover $\tilde M$ of $M$, with respect to which the fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$ acts by similarities. It was recently proved by Kourganoff that in this case $(\tilde M, h_D)$ is isometric to the Riemannian product of the flat space $\mathbb{R}^q$ and an incomplete irreducible Riemannian manifold $(N,g_N)$. In this paper we show that for every LCP manifold $(M,c,D)$, there exists a metric $g\in c$ such that the Lee form of $D$ with respect to $g$ vanishes on vectors tangent to the distribution on $M$ defined by the flat factor $\mathbb{R}^q$, and use this fact in order to construct new LCP structures from a given one by taking products. We also establish links between LCP manifolds and number field theory, and use them in order to construct large classes of examples, containing all previously known examples of LCP manifolds constructed by Matveev-Nikolayevsky, Kourganoff and Oeljeklaus-Toma.