Geometry of gravitational instantons

Abstract

We survey recent progress in the classification of hyperkähler and Hermitian gravitational instantons (i.e., complete noncompact 4 dimensional Ricci-flat manifolds with quadratic curvature decay), as well as the construction of non-Hermitian gravitational instantons via harmonic maps. We also present a list of open questions related to gravitational instantons.

To appear in Surveys in Differential Geometry