Locally conformally Kähler manifolds with potential

A locally conformally Kähler (LCK) manifold M is one which is covered by a Kähler manifold M̃ with the deck transform group acting conformally on M̃ . If M admits a holomorphic flow, acting on M̃ conformally, it is called a Vaisman manifold. Neither the class of LCK manifolds nor that of Vaisman manifolds is stable under small deformations. We define a new class of LCK-manifolds, called LCK manifolds with potential, which is closed under small deformations. All Vaisman manifolds are LCK with potential. We show that an LCK-manifold with potential admits a covering which can be compactified to a Stein variety by adding one point. This is used to show that any LCK manifold M with potential, dimM > 3, can be embedded to a Hopf manifold, thus improving on similar results for Vaisman and Sasakian manifolds ([OV2]).