A NNALI DELLA
S CUOLA N ORMALE S UPERIORE DI P ISA Classe di Scienze
N IGEL J. H ITCHIN
The moduli space of special lagrangian submanifolds
Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Scienze 4
esérie, tome 25, n
o3-4 (1997), p. 503-515
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503
The Moduli Space of Special Lagrangian Submanifolds
NIGEL J. HITCHIN
1. - Introduction
In their
quest
forexamples
of minimalsubmanifolds, Harvey
and Lawson in 1982[7]
extended the well-known fact that acomplex
submanifold of a Kahler manifold is minimal to the moregeneral
context of calibrated submanifolds.One such class is that of
special Lagrangian
submanifolds of a Calabi-Yau manifold. Newdevelopments
in thestudy
of these have raised thequestion
asto whether
they
should be accordedequal
status withcomplex
submanifolds.The
developments
stem from two sources. The first is the deformationtheory
of R. C. McLean[8].
This showsthat, given
one compactspecial Lagrangian
submanifoldL,
there is a local moduli space which is a manifold and whosetangent
space at L iscanonically
identified with the space of harmonic 1-forms on L. The,C2
innerproduct
on harmonic forms thengives
the modulispace a natural Riemannian metric. The second
input
is from the paper ofStrominger,
Yau and Zaslow[12]
which studies the moduli space ofspecial Lagrangian
tori in the context of mirrorsymmetry.
This paper is in some sense a commentary on these two
works,
but it isprovoked by
thequestion:
"What is the naturalgeometrical
structure on themoduli space of
special Lagrangian
submanifolds in a Calabi-Yau manifold?"We know that a moduli space of
complex
submanifolds(when unobstructed)
is a
complex
manifold. We shall show that the moduli space M ofspecial Lagrangian
submanifolds has the local structure of aLagrangian submanifold,
and weconjecture
that it is"special"
in anappropriate
sense."A
Lagrangian
submanifold of what?" the reader may well ask. Recall that if V is a finite-dimensional real vector space, then the naturalpairing
withits dual space V* defines a
symplectic
structure on V x V*. It also definesan indefinite metric. We shall show that there is a natural
embedding
of thelocal moduli space M as a
Lagrangian
submanifold in theproduct R)
xR) (where
n =dim L)
of two dual vector spaces and that McLean’s metric is the natural induced metric.The
symplectic
manifold V x V* can bethought
of in two ways as acotangent
bundle: as either T*V or T*V*. Thus theLagrangian
submanifold M is definedlocally
as thegraph
of the derivative of afunction 0 :
V -~ Ror 1/1 :
(1997), pp. 503-515
V * ~ R. We show that this
symmetry (which
isreally
theLegendre transform)
lies behind the
viewpoint
in[12],
where it is viewed as a manifestation of mirrorsymmetry.
This involvesstudying
the structure of the moduli space ofLagrangian
submanifoldstogether
with flat line bundles. We show that there isa natural
complex
structure and Kahler metric on this space, and that this is aCalabi-Yau metric if the
embedding
of M above isspecial.
2. - Calabi-Yau manifolds
,
A Calabi-Yau
manifold
is a Kähler manifold ofcomplex
dimension n witha covariant constant
holomorphic
n-form.Equivalently
it is a Riemannian man-ifold with
holonomy
contained inSU(n).
It is convenient for our purposes to
play
down the role of thecomplex
structure in
describing
such manifolds and toemphasise
instead the role ofthree closed
forms, satisfying
certainalgebraic
identities(see [10]).
We have the Kahler 2-form (JJ and the real andimaginary
partsQ
i andQ2
of the covariantconstant n-form. These
satisfy
some identities:(i)
cv isnon-degenerate
(ii) Ql 1 -f- i S22
islocally decomposable
andnon-vanishing
(iv)
+(SZ 1 - (respectively
if n is even(respec- tively odd)
These conditions
(together
with apositivity condition)
we now show serveto characterize Calabi-Yau manifolds.
Firstly
if QC =S21 -f- i S22
islocally decomposable
as01
A82 n
... AOn,
then take the subbundle A of T*M 0 Cspanned by 01, ... , On. By (iv)
and the fact that w"~ 0,
we haveand so T*M = A + A and we have an
almost-complex
structure. In thisdescription
a 1 -form 0 is oftype (1, 0)
if andonly
if S2 9 - 0. Since from(v) dQ,
=dQ2
= 0 this means that QC A dO = 0.Writing
we see that Cij = 0. Thus the ideal
generated by
A is closed under exte-rior
differentiation,
andby
theNewlander-Nirenberg
theorem the structure isintegrable.
Similarly, applying
thedecomposition
of 2-forms(1)
to cv,(iii) implies
thatthe
(0, 2)
componentvanishes,
and since cv isreal,
it is of type(1, 1).
It is closedby (v),
so if the hermitian form so defined ispositive definite,
then wehave a Kahler metric.
Since QC is closed and of
type (n, 0)
it is anon-vanishing holomorphic
section s of the canonical bundle. Relative to the trivialization s, the hermitian connection has connection form
given by
But property(iv) implies
that it has constant
length,
so the connection form vanishes is covariant constant.3. -
Special Lagrangian
submanifoldsA submanifold L of a
symplectic
manifold X isLagrangian
if w restrictsto zero on L and dim X = 2 dim L. A submanifold of a Calabi-Yau manifold is
special Lagrangian
if in addition Q =S21
restricts to zero on L. This condition involvesonly
two out of the threeforms,
and in manyrespects
what we shall bedoing
is to treat them both -the 2-form (o and the n-form S2 on the samefooting.
REMARKS.
1. We could relax the definition a little since Qc is a chosen
holomorphic
n-form: any constant
multiple
of Qc would also be covariant constant, so undersome circumstances we may need to say that L is
special Lagrangian if,
forsome non-zero c 1, c2 E
R, C I Q
-C2 Q2
= 0.2. On a
special Lagrangian
submanifold L, the n-formS22
restricts to anon-vanishing form,
so inparticular
L isalways
oriented.Examples
ofspecial Lagrangian
submanifolds are difficult tofind,
and so far consist of threetypes:
~
Complex Lagrangian
submanifolds ofhyperkahler
manifoldso Fixed
points
of a real structure on a Calabi-Yau manifold.
Explicit examples
for non-compact Calabi-Yau manifoldsThe
hyperkahler examples
ariseeasily.
In this case we have n = 2k andthree Kahler forms (01, W2, W3
corresponding
to the threecomplex
structuresI, J, K
of thehyperkahler
manifold. With respect to thecomplex
structure I theform c~~ = + is a
holomorphic symplectic
form. If L is acomplex Lagrangian
submanifold(i.e.
L is acomplex
submanifold and Nc vanishes onL),
then the real and
imaginary parts
ofthis,
cv2 and W3, vanish on L. Thus = W2 vanishes and if k is odd(respectively even),
the real(respectively imaginary) part
of Qc =(W3
+ vanishes.Using
thecomplex
structure J insteadof I, we see that L is
special Lagrangian.
Forexamples here,
we can take anyholomorphic
curve in a K3 surfaceS,
or itssymmetric product
in the Hilbertscheme which is
hyperkahler
from[1].
If X is a Calabi-Yau manifold with a real structure
(an antiholomorphic involution cr)
for which = 2013 and a*Q= -Q,
then the fixedpoint
set(the
set of real
points
ofX)
iseasily
seen to be aspecial Lagrangian
submanifold L.All Calabi-Yau metrics on compact manifolds are
produced by
the existence theorem of Yau. In thenon-compact
case, Stenzel[ 11 ]
has some concrete ex-amples.
Inparticular
T*Sn(with
thecomplex
structure of an affinequadric)
hasa
complete
Calabi-Yau metric for which the zero section isspecial Lagrangian.
When n = 2 this is the
hyperkahler Eguchi-Hanson
metric.4. - Deformations of
special Lagrangian
submanifoldsR. C. McLean has studied deformations of
special Lagrangian
submanifolds.His main result is
THEOREM 1
[8].
A normalvector field
V to a compactspecial Lagrangian submanifold
L is thedeformation
vectorfield
to a normaldeformation through special Lagrangian submanifolds if
andonly if
thecorresponding I -form (IV)*
onL is harmonic. There are no obstructions to
extending
afirst
orderdeformation
toan actual
deformation
and the tangent space to suchdeformations
can beidentified through
thecohomology
classof the
harmonicform
withH 1 (L, R).
Let us
briefly
see how the tangent ~pace to the(local)
moduli space M is identified with the space of harmonic 1-forms. Consider aI-parameter family Lt
ofLagrangian
submanifolds as a smooth mapf : ,C -~
X of the manifold,C = L x U to X where U c R is an interval and
f ( L , t)
=L t .
Since eachL
t isLagrangian,
restricts to zero on each fibre of p : £ ~ U so we can find aI -form i
on ,C such thatThe restriction 0
of i
to each fibre L x{t}
isindependent
of the choice of6’,
and since =
0,
it follows thatSimilarly,
sinceLt
isspecial Lagrangian,
the n-form Q vanishes on eachfibre,
so that
and since = 0 we have
d~p
= 0.Using
the induced metric onLt
one can show thatso that 0 is the
required
harmonic form.A more invariant way of
seeing
this is to take a section of the normal bundle ofLt,
since this is what an infinitesimal variationcanonically
describes.Take a
representative
vector field V on X and form the interiorproduct i(V)(0.
Since w vanishes on
Lr,
the restriction ofi(V)co
toLt
is a 1-form which isindependent
of the choice of V. Now isnaturally
a section of the normal bundle ofL,
C X and 0 is then thecorresponding
1-form.Suppose
now we take local coordinates tl , ... , tm on the moduli space M of deformations of L =Lo.
Here of course, from McLean, we know thatm =
b 1 (L )
= For each tangent vector8/8tj
we define as above acorresponding
closed 1-form9~
onLt
for each t E M:(with
aslight
abuse ofnotation).
Let
A 1, ... , Am
be a basis forHl (L , Z) (modulo torsion),
then we canevaluate the closed
form Sj
on thehomology
classAi
to obtain aperiod
ma-trix
hij
which is a function on the moduli space:r
Since
by
McLean’stheorem,
the harmonicforms Sj
arelinearly independent,
itfollows that
Àij
is invertible. We can now beexplicit
about the identification of the tangent space to M with thecohomology
groupR).
Let ot 1, ... , am EZ)
be the basis dual toA 1, ... , Am.
It follows thatidentifies
Tt M
withWe now
investigate
furtherproperties
of theperiod
matrix À.PROPOSITION 1. The
= E hi j dtj
on M are closed.PROOF. We
represent
the full localfamily
of deformationsby
a mapf’ :
.A/( 2013~ X where .M == L x M with
projection
p : M - M. Choosesmoothly
in each fibre
of p
a circlerepresenting A
i togive
an n + I-manifoldMi C
Mfibering
over M. Define the on Mby
The
push-down
map p*(integration
over thefibres)
takes closed forms to closedforms,
and since =0,
= 0 and sod ~
= 0.Now in local coordinates
A ij and O-j
restrictsto Oj
on eachfibre. Since
Oj
isclosed, integration
over the fibres ofA4i
isjust
evaluation onthe
homology
classAi. Thus §I = ~ and §I
is closed.From this
proposition,
we can find on M local functions u 1, ... , um, well- defined up to the addition of a constant, such thatSince
Àij
isinvertible,
u 1, ... , um are local coordinates on M. Moreinvariantly,
we have a coordinate chart
defined
by u(t) = F-i
ui ai which isindependent
of the choice ofbasis,
and iswell-defined up to a translation.
Clearly,
we should follow our even-handedpolicy
withrespect
to wand Q and enact the sameprocedure
for Q.Thus,
the basis a 1, ... , am defines a basisB 1, ... , Bm
ofHn_1 (L, Z)
and we form aperiod
matrix iti, *In a similar fashion we find local coordinates vl,... , vm on M such that
and an
invariantly
defined mapgiven, using
the basis~81,... , flm
ofR)
dual toBl , ... , Bm by v (t)
=Ei vipi.
We obtain from u and v a map
defined
by F(t) = (u(t), v(t)).
Let us see now how this fits in with the natural
,C2
metric on M. Note that since L isoriented,
and(L)
arecanonically
dual. For any vector space V there is a natural indefinitesymmetric
form on V ED V* definedby
B ((v, a,), (v, a)) = (v,
Thus x has a natural flat indefinite metric G.
PROPOSITION 2. The
,C2
metric g on M is F* G.PROOF. From
(2),
we haveThus
J
But
and
using Sj
wk =Ei
this is the same as(7).
5. -
Symplectic aspects
We have seen that the function F embeds the moduli space of
special Lagrangian
submanifolds of X which are deformations of L as a submanifold of x A vector space of the form V ® V* also has a naturalsymplectic
form w definedby
so that x
Hn-1 (L)
may be considered as asymplectic
manifold. Weshall now show the
following:
THEOREM 2. The map F embeds M in
H1 (L)
x(L)
as aLagrangian submanifold.
PROOF. We need to use the
algebraic identity (iii)
in Section 2relating
(oand Q on X:
Let Y and Z be two vector
fields,
thentaking
interiorproducts
with thisidentity,
we obtain
and
restricting
to aspecial Lagrangian
submanifold L, since N and Qvanish,
we have
Now for Y and Z use vector fields
extending 8/8ti
and and we thenobtain on L
Thus, integrating,
and so
using
From the definitions of the coordinates u and v in
(3)
and(5)
we haveso that
(8)
becomesBut this says
precisely
thatIt is well-known that a
Lagrangian
submanifold of the cotangent bundle T*N of a manifold for which theprojection
to N is a localdiffeomorphism
is
locally
defined as theimage
of a sectiondo :
N ~ T*N for some functionq5 :
N ~ R.Thus,
as a consequence of thetheorem, taking
N = wecan write
for some
um ) .
FromProposition
2 the natural metric on Mcan be written in the coordinates u 1, ... , um as
Equally,
we can take N = and find a function1/1 (VI , ... , vm)
torepresent
the metric in a similar form:The two functions
q5, *
are relatedby
the classicalLegendre
transform.REMARK. Metrics of the above form are said to be of Hessian type. V. Ru- uska characterized them in
[9]
as those metricsadmitting
an abelian Liealgebra
of
gradient
vectorfields,
the local actionbeing simply
transitive.Given that M
parametrizes special Lagrangian submanifolds,
it would seem reasonable to seek ananalogue
of thespecial
condition which Mmight
inheritfrom the
embedding
F. Now thegenerators
of V and A m V * define two constant m-formsW,
andW2
on the 2m-dimensional manifold V x V*. We could say that aLagrangian
submanifold of V x V * isspecial
if a linear combination of these formsvanishes,
in addition to thesymplectic
form w. With thisset-up
we have:
PROPOSITION 3. The map F embeds M as a
special Lagrangian submanifold if
and
only if any of the following equivalent
statements holds:~ ~ satisfies
theMonge-Ampère equation
= c.
1/1 satisfies
theMonge-Ampère equation = c-1
. The volume
of
the torusH 1 (Lt, R/Z)
isindependent of t
E M. The volume
of the
torus(L,, R/Z)
isindependent of t
E M.PROOF. For the first
part,
note that,using
the coordinates u 1,..., um, the m-formc l Wl + c2 W2
vanishes onF (M)
if andonly
ifwhich
gives
-Interchanging
the roles of V and V*gives
the second statement.To determine the volume of the torus
R/Z),
we take a basisa 1, ... , am of harmonic
1-forms,
normalizedby
and then the volume is
det(ai , aj) using
the innerproduct
on harmonic forms.Now from the definition of the normalized harmonic forms are
and the inner
product
Thus the volume is
Now in the coordinates tl,..., tm the form
CI WI + C2 W2
restricted toF (M)
isand this vanishes if and
only
if --cl /c2.
The final statement follows in similar way. The volume in this case isREMARKS.
1. The
relationship
betweenpairs
of solutions to theMonge-Ampere
equa- tions relatedby
theLegendre
transform is well-documented(see [2]).
2. On any
special Lagrangian
submanifold the volume form is the restriction ofQ2,
andS22
is closed in X, so thecohomology
class of the volume formis
independent
of t. Thus the 1-dimensional torusR/Z)
has constantvolume.
3. In the case where X is
hyperkahler
and L iscomplex Lagrangian
withrespect
to thecomplex
structure I, then the flat metric on H1 (L, R/Z)
is Kahlerand its volume is
essentially
the Liouville volume of the Kahler form. But thesymplectic
form on the torus iscohomologically
determined: if EH2 (L, R)
is the
cohomology
class of the 1-Kahler form of X, then for a,fl
ER)
the skew form is
given by
Since this is
entirely cohomological,
it isindependent
of t.4. Another
geometrical interpretation
of the structure on M is as an affinehypersurface
xm+ 1- ~ (x 1, ... , xm ) .
TheLegendre
transform thencorresponds
to the dual
hypersurface
oftangent planes,
and a solution to theMonge-Ampere equation
describes aparabolic affine hypersphere ([4], [2]).
6. - Kahler metrics
The
approach
ofStrominger,
Yau and Zaslow takes the moduli space notjust
ofspecial Lagrangian submanifolds,
but of submanifoldstogether
with flatunitary
line bundles("supersymmetric cycles").
Since a flat line bundle on L is classifiedby
an element ofR/Z),
thenby homotopy
invariance(we
areworking locally
or on asimply
connectedspace)
thisaugmented
moduli spacecan be taken to be
The tangent space
Tm
at apoint
of M’ is thuscanonically
This is a
complex
vector space, so M’ has an almostcomplex
structure. More- over, for any real vector space V, apositive
definite innerproduct
on V definesa hermitian form on V Q9
C,
so M’ has a hermitian metric. We then have:PROPOSITION 4. The almost
complex
structure I on Mc isintegrable
and theinner
product
onH 1 (L, R) defines
a Kdhler metric on Mc.PROOF. Use the basis a 1, ... , am of
R)
togive
coordinates x 1, ... , xm on the universalcovering
of the torusH 1 (L , R/Z) .
Then(tl , ... ,
tm , x 1, ... ,xm )
are local coordinates for Mc and from
(2)
the almostcomplex
structure isdefined
by
If we define the
complex
vector fieldsthen these
satisfy IXj = iXj
and so form a basis for the( 1, 0)
vector fields.The forms
Oj
definedby
annihilate the
Xj
and thus form a basis of the(0, I)-forms.
But from(3)
so that wj = uj are
complex coordinates,
and thecomplex
structure isintegrable.
The 2-form i-o for the Hermitian metric is defined
by
and from the definition of
I,
But from
Proposition
2 the metric isF* G,
so in the local coordinates tl,..., tm,(note
that symmetry follows from(8)). Thus,
from
(5).
This isclearly closed,
so the metric is Kahlerian.REMARK.
Since vk
= we can also writeso that
ø /2
is a Kahlerpotential
for this metric. Suchmetrics,
where thepotential depends only
on the real part of thecomplex variables,
were consideredby
Calabi in[3].
We have seen that the
pulled-back
metric F*G defines a Kahler metricon M~. If we
pull
back the constant m-formF* Wl - du
A ... Adum,
thenthis defines
directly
acomplex
m-formwhich is
clearly non-vanishing
andholomorphic. Using this,
we have:PROPOSITION 5. The
holomorphic m-form S2~
has constantlength
with respectto the Kdhler metric
if and only if any of the equivalent
conditionsof Proposition
3hold.
PROOF. First note that
Thus
But
Thus
S2~
has constantlength
iffdet p
is a constantmultiple
of det h. But from theproof
ofProposition 3,
this isequivalent
to the volume of the torusbeing
constant.
Note that we could
equally
haveargued using
theMonge-Ampere equation
for the Kahler
potential.
We have thus seen that if F maps M to a
special Lagrangian
submanifold of thecomplex
manifold Mc has a natural Calabi-Yau metric.REMARKS.
1. It is not hard to see that the tori
R/Z)
x{t} I
in Mc arespecial Lagrangian
with respect to the natural Kahler metric and theholomorphic
formSince the first Betti number of this torus is m =
dim M,
thefamily parametrized by t
E M iscomplete by
McLean’sresult,
and so we can repeat the process to find another Kahler manifold. The reader mayeasily verify
thatthe roles of
(À,
u i ,q5)
and(It,
vi,p)
areinterchanged.
In[12],
onebegins
witha Calabi-Yau manifold with a
family
ofspecial Lagrangian tori,
andproduces
its "mirror" Mc in the above sense.
Performing
the process a second time oneobtains some sort of
approximation
to the first manifold. The metric definedhere, however,
even when it isCalabi-Yau,
willhardly
ever extend to a compactmanifold,
since it has non-trivialKilling
fieldsalaxi - by
Bochner’soriginal
Weitzenbock argument, zero Ricci tensor would
imply
that these are covariant constant.2. The
simplest
case of the above process consists ofconsidering ellip-
tic curves in a
hyperkahler
4-manifold(a
2-dimensional Calabi-Yaumanifold).
Thus m = 2 and we obtain a 4-dimensional
hyperkahler
metric on Mc. Theexistence of two
Killing
fields shows that it must beproduced
from the Gibbons-Hawking
ansatz[6] using
a harmonic function of two variables. From the above arguments, this means that the 2-dimensionalMonge-Ampere equation
can bereduced to
Laplace’s equation
in two variables. Infact,
as the reader will findin
[5],
this isclassically
known. In the same way curves of genus g in(for
ex-ample)
a K3 surface generate a solution to the2g-dimensional Monge-Ampere equation.
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Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics
University of Cambridge
16 Mill Lane
Cambridge CB2 1 SB, England
current address:
Mathematical Institute 24-29 St. Giles
Oxford, OXI 3LB, England