Morse–Novikov cohomology of locally conformally Kähler manifolds

A locally conformally Kähler (LCK) manifold is a complex manifold admitting a Kähler covering, with the monodromy acting on this covering by holomorphic homotheties. We define three cohomology invariants, the Lee class, the Morse–Novikov class, and the Bott–Chern class, of an LCK-structure. These invariants play together the same role as the Kähler class in Kähler geometry. If these classes coincide for two LCK-structures, the difference between these structures can be expressed by a smooth potential, similar to the Kähler case. We show that the Morse–Novikov class and the Bott–Chern class of a Vaisman manifold vanish. Moreover, for any LCK-structure on a manifold, admitting a Vaisman structure, we prove that its Morse–Novikov class vanishes. We show that a compact LCK-manifold MM with vanishing Bott–Chern class admits a holomorphic embedding into a Hopf manifold, if dimCM⩾3dimCM⩾3, a result which parallels the Kodaira embedding theorem.