We analyze the moduli space of non-flat homogeneous affine connections on surfaces. For Type $mathcal{A}$ surfaces, we write down complete sets of invariants that determine the local isomorphism type depending on the rank of the Ricci tensor and examine the structure of the associated moduli space. For Type $mathcal{B}$ surfaces which are not Type $mathcal{A}$ we show the corresponding moduli space is a simply connected real analytic 4-dimensional manifold with second Betti number equal to $1$.
An affine manifold is said to be geodesically complete if all affine geodesics extend for all time. It is said to be affine Killing complete if the integral curves for any affine Killing vector field extend for all time. We use the solution space of the quasi-Einstein equation to examine these concepts in the setting of homogeneous affine surfaces.
The homogeneous affine surfaces have been classified by Opozda. They may be grouped into 3 families, which are not disjoint. The connections which arise as the Levi-Civita connection of a surface with a metric of constant Gauss curvature form one family; there are, however, two other families. For a surface in one of these other two families, we examine the Lie algebra of affine Killing vector fields and we give a complete classification of the homogeneous affine gradient Ricci solitons. The rank of the Ricci tensor plays a central role in our analysis.
We give a new short self-contained proof of the result of Opozda [B. Opozda, A classification of locally homogeneous connections on 2-dimensional manifolds, Differential Geom. Appl. 21 (2004), 173-198.] classifying the locally homogeneous torsion free affine surfaces and the extension to the case of surfaces with torsion due to Arias-Marco and Kowalski [T. Arias-Marco and O. Kowalski, Classification of locally homogeneous linear connections with arbitrary torsion on 2-dimensional manifolds, Monatsh. Math. 153 (2008), 1-18.]. Our approach rests on a direct analysis of the affine Killing equations and is quite different than the approaches taken previously in the literature.
We examine the space of solutions to the affine quasi--Einstein equation in the context of homogeneous surfaces. As these spaces can be used to create gradient Yamabe solitions, conformally Einstein metrics, and warped product Einstein manifolds using the modified Riemannian extension, we provide very explicit descriptions of these solution spaces. We use the dimension of the space of affine Killing vector fields to structure our discussion as this provides a convenient organizational framework.
We examine moduli spaces of locally homogeneous surfaces of Type~$mathcal{B}$ with torsion where the symmetric Ricci tensor is non-degenerate. We also determine the space of affine Killing vector fields in this context.