Inhomogeneous Einstein metrics on complex line bundles

Recent developments in higher-dimensional unified field theories have led to a great deal of interest in compact spaces admitting Einstein metrics. Almost all the physics literature on such spaces has been concerned with the very atypical case in which the space is homogeneous. The authors present a very simple construction of a wide class of inhomogeneous compact Einstein spaces with positive Ricci curvature found earlier by Berard-Bergery, (1982) which arise as certain 2-sphere bundles over an arbitrary Einstein-Kahler base space of positive Ricci curvature. Solutions on complete non-compact manifolds also exist, with negative or zero Ricci curvature.