Decreasing Weyl's energy by connected sums with locally conformally flat manifolds

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Malchiodi, Andrea, Malizia, Francesco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Malchiodi, Andrea
Malizia, Francesco
author_facet Malchiodi, Andrea
Malizia, Francesco
contents We study the Weyl functional on connected sums of two four-dimensional manifolds $(M,g_M)$ and $(Z,g_Z)$, assuming $g_M$ is Bach-flat and $g_Z$ locally conformally flat. We show that if $g_M$ is neither self-dual nor anti self-dual and if $g_Z$ is of positive Yamabe class, there exists a metric $g_Y$ on $Y := M \# Z$ with Weyl energy lower than that of $g_M$ (with the trivial exception of $(Z,g_Z) = (\mathbb{S}^4, g_{\mathbb{S}^4})$). This result has a relation to a conjecture by I.Singer and has a perspective application to the minimization of Weyl's energy. The proof relies on a simultaneous interplay of $W_M^+, W_M^-$ and the topology of $Z$, and also covers some orbifold cases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_17547
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Decreasing Weyl's energy by connected sums with locally conformally flat manifolds
Malchiodi, Andrea
Malizia, Francesco
Differential Geometry
53C21, 53C25, 58E11, 49J99
We study the Weyl functional on connected sums of two four-dimensional manifolds $(M,g_M)$ and $(Z,g_Z)$, assuming $g_M$ is Bach-flat and $g_Z$ locally conformally flat. We show that if $g_M$ is neither self-dual nor anti self-dual and if $g_Z$ is of positive Yamabe class, there exists a metric $g_Y$ on $Y := M \# Z$ with Weyl energy lower than that of $g_M$ (with the trivial exception of $(Z,g_Z) = (\mathbb{S}^4, g_{\mathbb{S}^4})$). This result has a relation to a conjecture by I.Singer and has a perspective application to the minimization of Weyl's energy. The proof relies on a simultaneous interplay of $W_M^+, W_M^-$ and the topology of $Z$, and also covers some orbifold cases.
title Decreasing Weyl's energy by connected sums with locally conformally flat manifolds
topic Differential Geometry
53C21, 53C25, 58E11, 49J99
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17547