An inequality relating the Euler characteristic, the signature and the <i>L</i>₂-norm of the curvature of the bundle of densities is proved for a four-dimensional compact Einstein-Weyl manifold. This generalises the Hitchin-Thorpe inequality for Einstein manifolds. The case where equality occurs is discussed and related to Hitchin's classification of Ricci-flat self-dual four-manifolds and to the recent work of Gauduchon on closed non-exact Einstein-Weyl geometries.

We present the extended Kuranishi space for a Kodaira surface as a nontrivial example to Kontsevich and Barannikov's extended deformation theory. We provide a non-trivial example of Hertling-Manin's weak Frobenius manifold. In addition, we find that Kodaira surface is its own mirror image in the sense of Merkulov. The calculations of extended deformation and the weak Frobenius structure are based on Merkulov's perturbation method. Our computation of cohomology is done in the context of compact nilmanifolds.

We generalize the Kodaira Embedding Theorem and Chow's Theorem to the context of families of complex supermanifolds. In particular, we show that every family of super Riemann surfaces is a family of projective superalgebraic varieties.

Motivated by new explicit positive Ricci curvature metrics on the four-sphere which are also Einstein-Weyl, we show that the dimension of the Einstein-Weyl moduli near certain Einstein metrics is bounded by the rank of the isometry group and that any Weyl manifold can be embedded as a hypersurface with prescribed second fundamental form in some Einstein-Weyl space. Closed four-dimensional Einstein-Weyl manifolds are proved to be absolute minima of the L²-norm of the curvature of Weyl manifolds and a local version of the Lafontaine inequality is obtained. The above metrics on the four-sphere are shown to contain minimal hypersurfaces isometric to S¹S² whose second fundamental form has constant length.

In [8], Hitchin proved that a compact K/ihlerian twistor space is in fact a projective algebraic manifold. Moreover, it is the twistor space associated to either the Euclidean 4-sphere S 4 or the complex projective plane CF 2 with Fubini-Study metric. The twistor spaces are 3 and the flag of lines in~ p2 respectively. In [10, 11], the author proved the existence of self-dual metric with positive scalar curvature on the connected-sums of two or three copies of the complex projective planes. Their twistor spaces are Moish6zon spaces. In fact, they are the small resolution of the intersection of two quadrics in~ ps with four nodes and the double covering of CP 3 branched along a quartic with thirteen nodes. Recently, the joint work of Donaldson and Friedman [3] produced a general procedure to construct new twistor spaces and hence self-dual manifolds. In this article, we shall follow the spirit of Hitchin's work and prove the