ON WEAKLY EINSTEIN ALMOST CONTACT MANIFOLDS

In this article we study almost contact manifolds admitting weakly Einstein metrics. We first prove that if a (2n + 1)-dimensional Sasakian manifold admits a weakly Einstein metric, then its scalar curvature s satisfies -6 ⩽ s ⩽ 6 for n = 1 and -2n(2n + 1) ${\frac{4n^2-4n+3}{4n^2-4n-1}}$ ⩽ s ⩽ 2n(2n + 1) for n ⩾ 2. Secondly, for a (2n + 1)-dimensional weakly Einstein contact metric (κ, μ)-manifold with κ < 1, we prove that it is flat or is locally isomorphic to the Lie group SU(2), SL(2), or E(1, 1) for n = 1 and that for n ⩾ 2 there are no weakly Einstein metrics on contact metric (κ, μ)-manifolds with 0 < κ < 1. For κ < 0, we get a classification of weakly Einstein contact metric (κ, μ)-manifolds. Finally, it is proved that a weakly Einstein almost cosymplectic (κ, μ)-manifold with κ < 0 is locally isomorphic to a solvable non-nilpotent Lie group.