Gravitational instantons and harmonic maps

Abstract: We study the interaction between toric Ricci-flat metrics in dimension 4 and axisymmetric harmonic maps from the 3-dimensional Euclidean space into the hyperbolic plane. Applications include (1). The construction of complete Ricci-flat 4-manifolds that are non-spin, simply-connected, and with arbitrary second Betti number. Our method is non-perturbative and is based on ruling out conical singularities arising from axisymmetric harmonic maps. These metrics also give systematic counterexamples to various versions of the Riemannian black hole uniqueness conjecture. (2). A PDE classification result for axisymmetric harmonic maps of degree at most 1, via the Gibbons-Hawking ansatz and the LeBrun-Tod ansatz, in terms of axisymmetric harmonic functions. This is motivated by the study of hyperkahler and conformally Kahler gravitational instantons.