Four-dimensional electrostatic system with harmonic (anti-)self-dual Weyl tensor

Abstract: We investigate four-dimensional electrostatic systems arising as spatial factors of static Einstein--Maxwell spacetimes with cosmological constant. Assuming that the electric field is everywhere collinear with the gradient of the lapse function, we prove that the harmonicity of one of the (anti-)self-dual components of the Weyl tensor imposes strong rigidity on the underlying geometry. More precisely, we show that the gradient of the lapse function is an eigenvector of the Ricci tensor and that the regular level sets of the lapse function are totally umbilic with constant mean curvature. As a consequence, the manifold is locally conformally flat and admits a local warped product structure with one-dimensional base and three-dimensional fiber of constant curvature.