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Month: June 2022

Flat Space as a Gravitational Instanton

Flat Space as a Gravitational Instanton

This post is about $M = \mathbb{H}$ with metric $g = dq d\bar{q}$. The Gibbons-Hawking ansatz is an ansatz for $4$-dimensional gravitational instantons with a $1$ parameter group of symmetries (think of $U(1)$ or $\mathbb{R}$). One may construct such an instanton from a connection $1$-form $\omega$ for a circle bundle $P$ over an open subset $B$ of $\mathbb{R}^3$ (assuming the group is $U(1)$) and from a smooth function $\Phi$ on $B$, thought of as a smooth section of the adjoint…

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