In mathematics, a Lefschetz manifold is a particular kind of symplectic manifold
, sharing a certain cohomological property with Kähler manifolds, that of satisfying the conclusion of the Hard Lefschetz theorem.
More precisely, the strong Lefschetz property asks that for
, the cup product be an isomorphism.
The topology of these symplectic manifolds is severely constrained, for example their odd Betti numbers are even.
This remark leads to numerous examples of symplectic manifolds which are not Kähler, the first historical example is due to William Thurston.
Each element of the second de Rham cohomology space of
is compact and oriented, then Poincaré duality tells us that
are vector spaces of the same dimension, so in these cases it is natural to ask whether or not the various iterations of Lefschetz maps are isomorphisms.
The Hard Lefschetz theorem states that this is the case for the symplectic form of a compact Kähler manifold.
is a strong Lefschetz element, or a strong Lefschetz class.
is a strong Lefschetz manifold if
is a strong Lefschetz element.
The strong Lefschetz theorem tells us that it is also a strong Lefschetz manifold, and hence a Lefschetz manifold.
Chal Benson and Carolyn S. Gordon proved in 1988[2] that if a compact nilmanifold is a Lefschetz manifold, then it is diffeomorphic to a torus.
The fact that there are nilmanifolds that are not diffeomorphic to a torus shows that there is some space between Kähler manifolds and symplectic manifolds, but the class of nilmanifolds fails to show any differences between Kähler manifolds, Lefschetz manifolds, and strong Lefschetz manifolds.
Gordan and Benson conjectured that if a compact complete solvmanifold admits a Kähler structure, then it is diffeomorphic to a torus.
Furthermore, many examples have been found of solvmanifolds that are strong Lefschetz but not Kähler, and solvmanifolds that are Lefschetz but not strong Lefschetz.
Such examples were given by Takumi Yamada in 2002.