On weaker notions for Kähler-Ricci solitons

We show that shrinking Kähler-Ricci solitons over a compact Kähler manifold are gradient shrinking Kähler-Ricci solitons. The proof relies on a remarkable identity on the kernels of a real and a complex elliptic operator proved in our solution of the variational stability problem for gradient shrinking Kähler-Ricci solitons in Pali (Complex Manifolds 3(1):41–144, 2016).