Partial compactification of metabelian Lie groups with prescribed varieties of minimal rational tangents

Abstract

We study minimal rational curves on a complex manifold that are tangent to a distribution. In this setting, the variety of minimal rational tangents (VMRT) has to be isotropic with respect to the Levi tensor of the distribution. Our main result is a converse of this: any smooth projective variety isotropic with respect to a vector-valued anti-symmetric form can be realized as VMRT of minimal rational curves tangent to a distribution on a complex manifold. The complex manifold is constructed as a partial equivariant compactification of a metabelian group, which is a result of independent interest.

19 pages, to appear in IMRN