2021/06/02 by Bernardo Araneda, Araneda, Bernardo
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Differential Geometry (math.DG) #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2106.01094
openalex publication_date 2021/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The search for a geometrical understanding of dualities in string theory, in particular T-duality, has led to the development of modern T-duality covariant frameworks such as Double Field Theory, whose mathematical structure can be understood in terms of generalized geometry and, more recently, para-Hermitian geometry. In this work we apply techniques associated to this doubled geometry to four-dimensional manifolds, and we show that they are particularly well-suited to the analysis of integrability in special spacetimes, especially in connection with Penrose's twistor theory and its applications to general relativity. This shows a close relationship between some of the geometrical structures in the para-Hermitian approach to double field theory and those in algebraically special solutions to the Einstein equations. Particular results include the classification of four-dimensional, possibly complex-valued, (para-)Hermitian structures in different signatures, the Lie and Courant algebroid structures of special spacetimes, and the analysis of deformations of (para-)complex structures. We also discuss a notion of "weighted algebroids" in relation to a natural gauge freedom in the framework. Finally, we analyse the connection with two- and three-dimensional (real and complex) twistor spaces, and how the former can be understood in terms of the latter, in particular in terms of twistor families.