A variational characterization of calibrated submanifolds

Abstract

Let $M$ be a fixed compact oriented embedded submanifold of a manifold $\overline{M}$. Consider the volume $\mathcal{V}(\overline{g})={\int }_M{\mathsf{vol}}_{(M,g)}$ as a functional of the ambient metric $\overline{g}$ on $\overline{M}$, where $g=\overline{g}{|}_M$. We show that $\overline{g}$ is a critical point of $\mathcal{V}$ with respect to a special class of variations of $\overline{g}$, obtained by varying a calibration $\mu$ on $\overline{M}$ in a particular way, if and only if $M$ is calibrated by $\mu$. We do not assume that the calibration is closed. We prove this for almost complex, associative, coassociative, and Cayley calibrations, generalizing earlier work of Arezzo-Sun in the almost Kähler case. The Cayley case turns out to be particularly interesting, as it behaves quite differently from the others. We also apply these results to obtain a variational characterization of Smith maps.

35 pages. Version 2: two references added and one reference updated. Final version, to appear in "Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations"

References in corpus (2)

• Introduction to ${\mathrm{G}}_2$ geometry
• Bubble Tree Convergence of Conformally Cross Product Preserving Maps

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Extrinsic geometry of calibrated submanifolds