Let $G$ be a compact Lie group acting effectively by isometries on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonempty fixed point set $Fix(M,G)$. We say that the action is \emph{fixed point homogeneous} if $G$ acts transitively on a normal sphere to some component of $Fix(M,G)$, equivalently, if $Fix(M,G)$ has codimension one in the orbit space of the action. We classify up to diffeomorphism closed, simply connected 5-manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature and an effective fixed point homogeneous isometric action of a compact Lie group.
We prove several finiteness theorems for the normal bundles to souls in nonnegatively curved manifolds. More generally, we obtain finiteness results for open Riemannian manifolds whose topology is concentrated on compact domains of ``bounded geometry''.
In this paper we prove the conjecture of Alexander and Currier that states, except for covering maps of equidistant surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space, a complete, nonnegatively curved immersed hypersurface in hyperbolic space is necessarily properly embedded.
In this short note, by using a general three circle theorem, we show the rigidity of the sharp Bezout estimate first found by Gang Liu on nonnegatively curved Riemann surface.
We prove Wilking's Conjecture about the completeness of dual leaves for the case of Riemannian foliations on nonnegatively curved symmetric spaces. Moreover, we conclude that such foliations split as a product of trivial foliations and a foliation with a single dual leaf.
In this paper, we construct a complete n-dim Riemannian manifold with positive Ricci curvature, quadratically nonnegatively curved infinity and infinite topological type. This gives a negative answer to a conjecture by Jiping Sha and Zhongmin Shen in the case of n greater than or equal to 6.
We classify nonnegatively curved simply connected 4-manifolds with circle symmetry up to equivariant diffeomorphisms. The main problem is rule out knotted curves in the singular set of the orbit space. As an extension of this work we classify all knots in S^3 which can be realized as an extremal set with respect to an inner metric on S^3 which has nonnegative curvature in the Alexandrov sense.
We use an index-theoretic technique of Hitchin to show that the space of complete Riemannian metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on certain open spin manifolds has nontrivial homotopy groups in infinitely many degrees. A new ingredient of independent interest is homotopy density of the subspace of metrics with cylindrical ends.
We address the question: how large is the family of complete metrics with nonnegative sectional curvature on S^2xR^3? We classify the connection metrics, and give several examples of non-connection metrics. We provide evidence that the family is small by proving some rigidity results for metrics more general than connection metrics.
Let $M$ be a compact nonnegatively curved Riemannian manifold admitting an isometric action by a compact Lie group $\mathsf G$ in a way that the quotient space $M/\mathsf G$ has nonempty boundary. Let $π: M \to M/\mathsf G$ denote the quotient map and $B$ be any boundary stratum of $M/\mathsf G$. Via a specific soul construction for $M/ \mathsf G$ we construct a smooth closed submanifold $N$ of $M$ such that $M \setminus π^{-1}(B)$ is diffeomorphic to the normal bundle of $N$. As an application we show that a simply connected torus manifold admitting an invariant metric of nonnegative curvatur…
Let $M^n$ be a closed manifold of almost nonnegative sectional curvature and nonzero first de Rham cohomology group. For any $[θ] \in H^1_{dR}(M^n), [θ] \neq 0$, we show that the Morse- Novikov cohomology group $H^p(M^n, θ)$ vanishes for any $p$. A similar result holds for a closed manifold of almost nonnegative Ricci curvature under the additional assumption that its curvature operator is uniformly bounded from below.
We give examples of open manifolds that carry infinitely many complete metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature such that they all have the same soul, and their isometry classes lie in different connected components of the moduli space. All previously known examples of this kind have souls of codimension one. In our examples the souls have codimensions three and two.
Let $M$ be a Milnor sphere or, more generally, the total space of a linear $S^3$-bundle over $S^4$ with $H^4(M;\mathbb{Q})=0$. We show that the moduli space of metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on $M$ has infinitely many path components. The same holds true for the moduli space of metrics of positive Ricci curvature on $M$.
We provide techniques for studying the nonnegatively curved left-invariant metrics on a compact Lie group. For "straight" paths of left-invariant metrics starting at bi-invariant metrics and ending at nonnegatively curved metrics, we deduce a nonnegativity property of the initial derivative of curvature. We apply this result to obtain a partial classification of the nonnegatively curved left-invariant metrics on SO(4).
Let $G$ be a compact Lie group acting isometrically on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonempty fixed point set $M^G$. We say that $M$ is fixed-point homogeneous if $G$ acts transitively on a normal sphere to some component of $M^G$. Fixed-point homogeneous manifolds with positive sectional curvature have been completely classified. We classify fixed-point homogeneous Riemannian manifolds in dimensions 3 and 4 and determine which nonnegatively curved simply-connected 4-manifolds admit a smooth fixed-point homogeneous circle action with a given orbit space structure.
We classify compact simply-connected 5-dimensional manifolds which admit a metric of nonnegative curvature with a connected non-abelian group acting by isometries. We show that they are diffeomorphic to either S^5, S^3 x S^2, the nontrivial S^3-bundle over S^2 or the Wu-manifold, SU(3)/SO(3). This result is a consequence of our equivariant classification of all SO(3) and SU(2)-actions on compact simply-connected 5-manifolds. In the case of positive curvature we obtain a partial classification.
Let V be an open manifold with complete nonnegatively curved metric such that the normal sphere bundle to a soul has no section. We prove that the souls of nearby nonnegatively curved metrics on V are smoothly close. Combining this result with some topological properties of pseudoisotopies we show that for many V the space of complete nonnegatively curved metrics has infinite higher homotopy groups.
In this paper, we study the topology of topologically regular 4-dimensional open non-negatively curved Alexandrov spaces. These spaces occur naturally as the blow-up limits of compact Riemannian manifolds with lower curvature bound. These manifolds have also been studied by Yamaguchi in his preprint [Yam2002]. Our main tools are gradient flows of semi-concave functions and critical point theory for distance functions, which have been used to study the 3-dimensional collapsing theory in the paper [CaoG2010]. The results of this paper will be used in our future studies of collapsing 4-manifolds,…
We show that the moduli space of nonnegatively curved metrics on each member of a large class of 2-connected 7-manifolds, including each smooth manifold homeomorphic to $S^7$, has infinitely many connected components. The components are distinguished using the Kreck-Stolz $s$-invariant computed for metrics constructed by Goette, Kerin and Shankar. The invariant is computed by extending each metric to the total space of an orbifold disc bundle and applying generalizations of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem for orbifolds with boundary. We develop methods for computing characteristic class…
We show that for an orientable non-spin manifold with fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and universal cover $S^2\times S^3,$ the moduli space of metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature has infinitely many path components. The representatives of the components are quotients of the standard metric on $S^3\times S^3$ or metrics on Brieskorn varieties previously constructed using cohomogeneity one actions. The components are distinguished using the relative $η$ invariant of the spin$^c$ Dirac operator computed by means of a Lefschetz fixed point theorem.
In this paper, we study a complete noncompact nonnegatively curved Alexandrov space $A$ with a soul $S$ of codimension two. We establish some structural results under additional regularity assumptions. As an application, we conclude that in this case Sharafutdinov retraction, $π:\ A\to S$, is a submetry.
We prove that a class of asymptotically nonnegatively curved manifolds (in the sense of Abresch) satisfying some uniform Euclidean type volume growth conditions contains only finitely many homeomorphism types.
We consider invariant Riemannian metrics on compact homogeneous spaces $G/H$ where an intermediate subgroup $K$ between $G$ and $H$ exists. In this case, the homogeneous space $G/H$ is the total space of a Riemannian submersion. The metrics constructed by shrinking the fibers in this way can be interpreted as metrics obtained from a Cheeger deformation and are thus well known to be nonnegatively curved. On the other hand, if the fibers are homothetically enlarged, it depends on the triple of groups $(H,K,G)$ whether nonnegative curvature is maintained for small deformations. Building on the wo…
We study the space of complete Riemannian metrics of nonnegative curvature on the plane equipped with the C^k topology. If k is infinite, we show that the space is homeomorphic to the separable Hilbert space. For any k we prove that the space cannot be made disconnected by removing a finite dimensional subset. A similar result holds for the associated moduli space. The proof combines properties of subharmonic functions with results of infinite dimensional topology and dimension theory. A key step is a characterization of the conformal factors that make the standard Euclidean metric on the plan…
We consider invariant Riemannian metrics on compact homogeneous spaces G/H where an intermediate subgroup K between G and H exists, so that the homogeneous space G/H is the total space of a Riemannian submersion. We study the question as to whether enlarging the fibers of the submersion by a constant scaling factor retains the nonnegative curvature in the case that the deformation starts at a normal homogeneous metric. We classify triples of groups (H,K,G) where nonnegative curvature is maintained for small deformations, using a criterion proved by Schwachhöfer and Tapp. We obtain a complete c…
We prove that any rational linear combination of Pontryagin numbers that does not factor through the universal elliptic genus is unbounded on connected closed spin manifolds of nonnegative sectional curvature.
Consider a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary. In this short note we prove that under certain positive curvature assumptions on the manifold and its boundary the Steklov eigenvalues of the manifold are controlled by the Laplace eigenvalues of the boundary. Additionally, in two dimensions we obtain an upper bound for these Steklov eigenvalues in terms of topology of the surface without any curvature restrictions.
We prove that in Euclidean space $R^{n+1}$ any compact immersed nonnegatively curved hypersurface $M$ with free boundary on the sphere $S^n$ is an embedded convex topological disk. In particular, when the $m^{th}$ mean curvature of $M$ is constant, for any $1\leq m\leq n$, $M$ is a spherical cap or an equatorial disk.
We determine the homeomorphism type of the space of smooth complete nonnegatively curved metrics on surfaces of positive Euler characteristic equipped with the topology of $C^γ$ uniform convergence on compact sets, when $γ$ is infinite or is not an integer. If $γ=\infty$, the space of metrics is homeomorphic to the separable Hilbert space. If $γ$ is finite and not an integer, the space of metrics is homeomorphic to the countable power of the linear span of the Hilbert cube. We also prove similar results for some other spaces of metrics including the space of complete smooth Riemannian metrics …
In each dimension $4k+1\geq 9$, we exhibit infinite families of closed manifolds with fundamental group $\mathbb Z_2$ for which the moduli space of metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature has infinitely many path components. Examples of closed manifolds with finite fundamental group with this property were known before only in dimension $5$ and dimensions $4k+3\geq 7$.
We provide a classification of compact Euclidean submanifolds $M^n\subset{\mathbb{R}}^{n+2}$ with nonnegative sectional curvature, for $n\ge 3$. The classification is in terms of the induced metric (including the diffeomorphism classification of the manifold), and we study the structure of the immersions as well. In particular, we provide the first known example of a nonorientable quotient $({\mathbb{S}}^{n-1}\times{\mathbb{S}}^1)/{\mathbb{Z}_2}\subset{\mathbb{R}}^{n+2}$ with nonnegative curvature. For the 3-dimensional case, we show that either the universal cover is isometric to ${\mathbb{S}…
We prove that any properly oriented $C^{2,1}$ isometric immersion of a positively curved Riemannian surface M into Euclidean 3-space is uniquely determined, up to a rigid motion, by its values on any curve segment in M. A generalization of this result to nonnegatively curved surfaces is presented as well under suitable conditions on their parabolic points. Thus we obtain a local version of Cohn-Vossen's rigidity theorem for convex surfaces subject to a Dirichlet condition. The proof employs in part Hormander's unique continuation principle for elliptic PDEs. Our approach also yields a short pr…
We study nonnegatively curved metrics on S^2xR^4. First, we prove rigidity theorems for connection metrics; for example, the holonomy group of the normal bundle of the soul must lie in a maximal torus of SO(4). Next, we prove that Wilking's almost-positively curved metric on S2xS3 extends to a nonnegatively curved metric on S^2xR^4 (so that Wilking's space becomes the distance sphere of radius 1 about the soul). We describe in detail the geometry of this extended metric.
In this paper, we study polyhedral 3-manifolds with nonnegative curvature and integral monodromy, two conditions motivated by Thurston's work in arXiv:math/9801088. We classify the 32 isometry types of codimension 3 singularities in such manifolds. We also show that the number of these singularities is bounded.
We prove that certain involutions defined by Vogell and Burghelea-Fiedorowicz on the rational algebraic $K$-theory of spaces coincide. This gives a way to compute the positive and negative eigenspaces of the involution on rational homotopy groups of pseudoisotopy spaces from the involution on rational $S^{1}$-equivariant homology group of the free loop space of a simply-connected manifold. As an application, we give explicit dimensions of the open manifolds $V$ that appear in Belegradek-Farrell-Kapovitch's work for which the spaces of complete nonnegatively curved metrics on $V$ have nontrivia…
We show that almost nonnegatively curved m-dimensional manifolds are, up to finite cover, nilpotent spaces in the sense of homotopy theory and have C(m)-nilpotent fundamental groups. We also show that up to a finite cover almost nonnegatively curved manifolds are fiber bundles with simply connected fibers over nilmanifolds.
This is a slightly altered version of the authors thesis from 2014. In the first main part we show that the quotient space of a compact, simply connected and nonnegatively curved Riemannian 4-manifold by an effective, isometric circle-action admits an approximation in Gromov-Hausdorff topology by smooth, positively curved Riemannian 3-manifolds. In the second main part we show that a compact, nonnegatively curved and fixed point homogeneous manifold is diffeomorphic to the unit normal bundles of two smooth closed submanifolds glued together along their boundaries. As a corollary we show that a…
Given compact Lie groups H\subset G, we study the space of G-invariant metrics on G/H with nonnegative sectional curvature. For an intermediate subgroup K between H and G, we derive conditions under which enlarging the Lie algebra of K maintains nonnegative curvature on G/H. Such an enlarging is possible if (K,H) is a symmetric pair, which yields many new examples of nonnegatively curved homogeneous metrics. We provide other examples of spaces G/H with unexpectedly large families of nonnegatively curved homogeneous metrics.
We establish a link between rational homotopy theory and the problem which vector bundles admit complete Riemannian metric of nonnegative sectional curvature. As an application, we show for a large class of simply-connected nonnegatively curved manifolds that, if C lies in the class and T is a torus of positive dimension, then "most" vector bundles over the product of C and T admit no complete nonnegatively curved metric.
We characterize complete nonnegatively curved steady gradient soliton with curvature in L^1. We show that there are isometric to a product (R^2,g_{cigar}) times(R^{n-2}, eucl))/Gamma where Gamma is a Bieberbach group of rank n-2. We prove also a similar local splitting result under weaker curvature assumptions.
We give new counterexamples to a question of Karsten Grove, whether there are only finitely many rational homotopy types among simply connected manifolds satisfying the assumptions of Gromov's Betti number theorem. Our counterexamples are homogeneous Riemannian manifolds, in contrast to previous ones. They consist of two families in dimensions 13 and 22. Both families are nonnegatively curved with an additional upper curvature bound and differ already by the ring structure of their cohomology rings with complex coefficients. The 22-dimensional examples also admit almost nonnegative curvature o…
We say that a nonnegatively curved manifold $(M,g)$ has quarter pinched flag curvature if for any two planes which intersect in a line the ratio of their sectional curvature is bounded above by 4. We show that these manifolds have nonnegative complex sectional curvature. By combining with a theorem of Brendle and Schoen it follows that any positively curved manifold with strictly quarter pinched flag curvature must be a space form. This in turn generalizes a result of Andrews and Nguyen in dimension 4. For odd dimensional manifolds we obtain results for the case that the flag curvature is pinc…
We show that any n-dimensional nonnegatively curved Alexandrov space with the maximal possible number of extremal points is isometric to a quotient space of Euclidean n -space by an action of a crystallographic group. We describe all such actions.
We develop techniques for classifying the nonnegatively curved left-invariant metrics on a compact Lie group G. We prove rigidity theorems for general G and a partial classification for G=SO(4). Our approach is to reduce the general question to an infinitesimal version; namely, to classify the directions one can move away from a fixed bi-invariant metric such that curvature variation formulas predict nearby metrics are nonnnegatively curved.
We define a Riemannian structure as a pre-homogeneous geometric structure with curvature R. We show that R=0 if and only if the underlying metric has constant curvature. We define pre-homogeneous geometric structures and pose some problems.
We examine homogeneous metrics on spheres and determine which ones have positive sectional curvature. The answer is subtle and surprisingly difficult to prove. In some cases we also determine their pinching constants. This completes the classification of all homogeneous metrics with positive curvature (apart from one special Aloff Wallach space where the set of homogeneous metrics is too large).
A classical result of Milman roughly states that every Lipschitz function on $\mathbb{S}^n$ is almost constant on a sufficiently high-dimensional sphere $\mathbb{S}^m\subset \mathbb{S}^n$. In this paper we extend the result by proving that any Lipschitz function on a positively curved homogeneous space is almost constant on a high dimensional submanifold.
We show that all vector bundles over CP^2 which are not spin admit a complete metric with nonnegative sectional curvature. In the proof we construct a nonnegatively curved metric on the corresponding principle bundle by showing that it admits a cohomogeneity one action with singular orbits of codimension 2. This is closely related to the problem of when an action of G on the base of an L principle bundle lifts to the total space, such that the lift commutes with L. We solve this lifting problem for all SO(k) principle bundles over a 4-dimensional simply connected base B with G a cohomogeneity …
In this paper, we study normal homogeneous Finsler spaces. We first define the notion of a normal homogeneous Finsler space, using the method of isometric submersion of Finsler metrics. Then we study the geometric properties. In particular, we establish a technique to reduce the classification of normal homogeneous Finsler spaces of positive flag curvature to an algebraic problem. The main result of this paper is a classification of positively curved normal homogeneous Finsler spaces. It turns out that a coset space $G/H$ admits a positively curved normal homogeneous Finsler metric if and only…
In this paper, we introduce the flag-wise positively curved condition for Finsler spaces (the (FP) Condition), which means that in each tangent plane, we can find a flag pole in this plane such that the corresponding flag has positive flag curvature. Applying the Killing navigation technique, we find a list of compact coset spaces admitting non-negatively curved homogeneous Finsler metrics satisfying the (FP) Condition. Using a crucial technique we developed previously, we prove that most of these coset spaces cannot be endowed with positively curved homogeneous Finsler metrics. We also prove …
In this paper, we prove two rigidity results for non-positively curved homogeneous Finsler metrics. Our first main result yields an extension of Hu-Deng's well-known result proven for the Randers metrics. Indeed, we prove that every connected homogeneous Finsler space with non-positive flag curvature and isotropic S-curvature is Riemannian or locally Minkowskian. We extend the Szabó's rigidity theorem for Berwald surfaces and show that homogeneous isotropic Berwald metrics with non-positive flag curvature are Riemannian or locally Minkowskian. We prove that a homogeneous $(α, β)$-metrics has i…
We establish metrics of positive $2^\mathrm{nd}$-intermediate Ricci curvature, i.e. $\mathrm{Ric}_2>0$, on products of positively curved homogeneous spaces. Using these examples, we demonstrate that the Hopf conjectures, Petersen-Wilhelm conjecture, Berger fixed point theorem, and Hsiang-Kleiner theorem for positively curved manifolds do not hold in the $\mathrm{Ric}_2>0$ setting. These observations indicate that the class of manifolds with $\mathrm{Ric}_2>0$ is vastly different from the class of positively curved manifolds.
