We determine a global structure of the moduli space of self-dual metrics on 3CP2 satisfying the following three properties: (i) the scalar curvature is of positive type, (ii) they admit a non-trivial Killing field, (iii) they are not conformal to the LeBrun’s self- dual metrics based on the ‘hyperbolic ansatz’. We prove that the moduli space of these metrics is isomorphic to an orbifold R3/G, where G is an involution of R3 having two-dimensional fixed locus. In particular, the moduli space is non-empty and connected. We also remark that Joyce’s self-dual metrics with torus symmetry appear as a limit of our self-dual metrics. Our proof of the result is based on the twistor theory. We first determine a defining equation of a projective model of the twistor space of the metric, and then prove that the projective model is always birational to a twistor space, by determining the family of twistor lines. In determining them, a key role is played by a classical result in algebraic geometry that a smooth plane quartic always possesses twenty-eight bitangents.

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The Ward equation, also called the modified 2+1 chiral model,is obtained by a dimension reduction and a gauge fixing from the self-dual Yang-Mills field equation on R2,2. It has a Lax pair and is an integrable system. Ward constructed solitons whose ex- tended solutions have distinct simple poles. He also used a limiting method to construct 2-solitons whose extended solutions have a double pole. Ioannidou and Zakrzewski, and Anand constructed more soliton solutions whose extended solutions have a double or triple pole. Some of the main results of this paper are: (i) We construct algebraic B¨acklund transformations (BTs) that generate new solutions of the Ward equation from a given one by an algebraic method. (ii) We use an order k limiting method and algebraic BTs to construct explicit Ward solitons, whose extended solutions have arbitrary poles and multiplicities. (iii) We prove that our construction gives all solitons of the Ward equation explicitly and the entries of Ward solitons must be rational functions in x, y and t. (iv) Since stationary Ward solitons are unitons, our method also gives an explicit construction of all k-unitons from finite sequences of rational maps from C to Cn.

Compactifications of symmetric spaces have been constructed by different methods for various applications. One application is to provide the so-called rational boundary components which can be used to compactify locally symmetric spaces. In this paper, we construct many compactifications of symmetric spaces using a uniform method, which is motivated by the Borel-Serre compact- ification of locally symmetric spaces. Besides unifying compactifications of both symmetric and locally symmetric spaces, this uniform construction allows one to compare and relate easily different compactifications, to extend the group action continuously to boundaries of compactifications, and to clarify the structure of the boundaries.