We show that on a closed smooth manifold $M$ equipped with $k$ fiber bundle structures whose vertical distributions span the tangent bundle, every smooth diffeomorphism $f$ of $M$ sufficiently close to the identity can be written as a product $f=f_1... f_k$, where $f_i$ preserves the $i^{\text{th}}$-fiber. The factors $f_i$ can be chosen smoothly in $f$. We apply this result to show that on a certain class of closed smooth manifolds every diffeomorphism sufficiently close to the identity can be written as product of commutators and the factors can be chosen smoothly. Furthermore we get concrete estimates on how many commutators are necessary.
It is proven that the identity component of the group preserving the leaves of a generalized foliation is perfect. This shows that a well-known simplicity theorem on the diffeomorphism group extends to the nontransitive case.
In this paper we study the uniform perfectness, boundedness and uniform simplicity of diffeomorphism groups of compact manifolds with boundary and open manifolds and obtain some upper bounds of their diameters with respect to commutator length, those with support in balls and conjugation-generated norm.
Given a result of Herman, we provide a new elementary proof of the fact that the connected component of the group of compactly supported diffeomorphisms is perfect and hence simple. Moreover, we show that every diffeomorphism $g$, which is sufficiently close to the identity, can be represented as a product of four commutators, $g=[h_1,k_1]\circ...\circ[h_4,k_4]$, where the factors $h_i$ and $k_i$ can be chosen to depend smoothly on $g$.
The long-standing problem of the perfectness of the compactly supported equivariant homeomorphism group on a $G$-manifold (with one orbit type) is solved in the affirmative. The proof is based on an argument different than that for the case of diffeomorphisms. The theorem is a starting point for computing $H_1(\mathcal{H}_G(M))$ for more complicated $G$-manifolds.
Given a closed connected Riemannian manifold M and a connected Riemannian manifold N, we study fiberwise volume decreasing diffeomorphisms on the product M x N. Our main theorem shows that in the presence of certain cohomological condition on M and N such diffeomorphisms must map a fiber diffeomorphically onto another fiber and are therefore fiber volume preserving. As a first corollary, we show that the isometries of M x N split. We also study properly discontinuous actions of a discrete group on M x N. In this case, we generalize the first Bieberbach theorem and prove a special case of an ex…
We give a purely geometrical smooth characterization of closed infrasolv manifolds and orbifolds by showing that, up to diffeomorphism, these are precisely the spaces which admit a collapse with bounded curvature and diameter to compact flat orbifolds. Moreover, we distinguish irreducible smooth fake tori geometrically from standard ones by proving that the former have non-vanishing D-minimal volume.
In this paper we introduce the notion of tangent space TG of a (not necessary smooth) subgroup G of the diffeomorphism group Diff(M) of a compact manifold M. We prove that TG is a Lie subalgebra of the Lie algebra of smooth vector fields on M. The construction can be generalized to subgroups of any (finite or infinite dimensional) Lie groups. The tangent Lie algebra TG introduced this way is a generalization of the classical Lie algebra in the smooth cases. As a working example, we discuss in detail the tangent structure of the holonomy group and fibered holonomy group of Finsler manifolds.
We prove that all smooth sphere bundles that admit fiberwise 1/4-pinched metrics are induced bundles of vector bundles, so their structure groups reduce from the diffeomorphism group of the sphere to the orthogonal group. This result implies the existence of many smooth n-sphere bundles over a k-sphere that do not support strictly 1/4-pinched positively curved Riemannian metrics on their fibers.
On a fiber bundle without structure group the action of the gauge group (the group of all fiber respecting diffeomorphisms) on the space of (generalized) connections is shown not to admit slices.
We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds. As an application, we show that, for a simply-connected oriented compact smooth 4-manifold $X$ with boundary with an assumption on the Frøyshov invariant or the Manolescu invariants $α, β, γ$ of $\partial X$, the inclusion map $\mathrm{Diff}(X,\partial) \hookrightarrow \mathrm{Homeo}(X,\partial)$ between the groups of diffeomorphisms and homeomorphisms whic…
A locally conformally symplectic (LCS) form is an almost symplectic form $ω$ such that a closed one-form $θ$ exists with $dω=θ\wedgeω$. A fiber bundle with LCS fiber $(F, ω,θ)$ is called LCS if the transition maps are diffeomorphisms of $F$ preserving $ω$ (and hence $θ$). In this paper, we find conditions for the total space of an LCS fiber bundle to admit an LCS form which restricts to the LCS form of the fibers. This is done by using the coupling form introduced by Sternberg and Weinstein, \cite{gls}, in the symplectic case. The construction is related to an adapted Hamiltonian action called…
We prove hyperbolic 3-manifolds are geometrically inflexible: a unit quasiconformal deformation of a Kleinian group extends to an equivariant bi-Lipschitz diffeomorphism between quotients whose pointwise bi-Lipschitz constant decays exponentially in the distance form the boundary of the convex core for points in the thick part. Estimates at points in the thin part are controlled by similar estimates on the complex lengths of short curves. We use this inflexibility to give a new proof of the convergence of pseudo-Anosov double-iteration on the quasi-Fuchsian space of a closed surface, and the r…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces using the local index theorem by Bismut-Freed. Using this, we deduce new obstructions to the smooth isotopy to the identity for compositions of Dehn twists on $(-2)$-spheres in closed $4$-manifolds. We obtain several applications: (1) We exhibit the first examples of closed simply-connected symplectic $4$-manifolds admitting Torelli symplect…
We classify the total spaces of bundles over the four sphere with fiber a three sphere up to orientation preserving and reversing homotopy equivalence, homeomorphism and diffeomorphism. These total spaces have been of interest to both topologists and geometers. It has recently been shown by Grove and Ziller that each of these total spaces admits metrics with nonnegative sectional curvature.
In a natural way, the local diffeomorphisms of a manifold onto itself act on the reference frame bundles of any order and on the bundles associated with them. Due to the transitivity, the invariants by diffeomorphisms of an associated bundle correspond to the real functions on the orbit space of the action of the jet group on the typical fiber, which enables to construct the said associated bundle. Scalar differential invariants are functions on bundles of jets of sections of associated bundles, which are invariant by the standard action of local diffeomorphisms. We show that these jet bundles…
Let F_0=B,...,F_n be a sequence of differentiable manifolds, G_i a Lie subgroup of diffeomorphisms of F_i, and H_i a subgroup of G_i central in G_i. We suppose also given a locally trivial bundle p_{K_i} over F_{i-1} which typical fiber is K_i the quotient of G_i by H_i. The aim of this paper is to study the differential geometry of the following problem: classify sequences M_n\to...M_1, where each map from M_i to M_{i-1} is a locally trivial fibration which typical fiber is F_i and which transition functions image are elements of G_i. We associate to this problem a tower of gerbes and define …
We apply spectral sequences to derive both an obstruction to the existence of $n$-fold prolongations and a topological classification. Prolongations have been used in the literature in an attempt to prove that every Engel structure on $M\times\mathbb{S}^1$ with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers is determined by the contact structure induced on a cross section and the twisting of the Engel structure along the fibers. Our results show that this statement needs some modification: to classify the diffeomorphism type of the Engel structure we additionally have to fix a class in the fi…
We apply the ADM approach to obtain a Hamiltonian description of the Einstein-Hilbert action. In doing so we add four new ingredients: (i) We eliminate the diffeomorphism constraints. (ii) We replace the densities $\sqrt g$ by a function $\f(x,g_{ij})$ with the help of a fixed metric $χ$ such that the Lagrangian and hence the Hamiltonian are functions. (iii) We consider the Lagrangian to be defined in a fiber bundle with base space $\so$ and fibers F(x) which can be treated as Lorentzian manifolds equipped with the Wheeler-DeWitt metric. It turns out that the fibers are globally hyperbolic. (i…
Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension n. For k \in {0,...,n}, we denote Gr_{k}(M) the set of compact, connected and oriented submanifolds of M of dimension k. This set is called the non-linear Grassmannian. In this article, we endow Gr_{k}(M) with a smooth Fréchet manifold structure and investigate its basic geometrical properties. In particular, if Σ\in Gr_{k}(M), we show that the space of smooth embeddings Emb(Σ,M) is the total space of principal fiber bundle with base space a collection of connected components of Gr_{k}(M). We also show that the connected components of Gr_…
We construct smooth bundles with base and fiber products of two spheres whose total spaces have non-vanishing $\hat{A}$-genus. We then use these bundles to locate non-trivial rational homotopy groups of spaces of Riemannian metrics with lower curvature bounds for all Spin-manifolds of dimension six or at least ten which admit such a metric and are a connected sum of some manifold and $S^n \times S^n$ or $S^n \times S^{n+1}$, respectively. We also construct manifolds $M$ whose spaces of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature have homotopy groups that contain elements of infinite order …
