We generalize Sunada's method to produce new examples of closed, locally non-isometric manifolds which are isospectral. In particular, we produce pairs of isospectral, simply-connected, locally non-isometric normal homogeneous spaces. These pairs also allow us to see that in general group actions with discrete spectra are not determined up to measurable conjugacy by their spectra. In particular, we show this for lattice actions.
We construct continuous families of Riemannian metrics on certain simply connected manifolds with the property that the resulting Riemannian manifolds are pairwise isospectral for the Laplace operator acting on functions. These are the first examples of simply connected Riemannian manifolds without boundary which are isospectral, but not isometric. For example, we construct continuous isospectral families of metrics on the product of spheres S^4\times S^3\times S^3. The metrics considered are not locally homogeneous. For a big class of such families, the set of critical values of the scalar cu…
We construct pairs of conformally equivalent isospectral Riemannian metrics $ϕ_1 g$ and $ϕ_2 g$ on spheres $S^n$ and balls $B^{n+1}$ for certain dimensions $n$, the smallest of which is $n=7$, and on certain compact simple Lie groups. In the case of Lie groups, the metric $g$ is left-invariant. In the case of spheres and balls, the metric $g$ is not the standard metric but may be chosen arbitrarily close to the standard one. For the same manifolds $(M,g)$ we also show that the functions $ϕ_1$ and $ϕ_2$ are isospectral potentials for the Schrödinger operator $\hbar^2Δ+ϕ$. To our knowledge, thes…
Length spectrum rigidity and flexibility of spheres of revolution with one equator
Ruhr Universität Bochum（波鸿鲁尔大学）；Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, IMJ-PRG（索邦大学、巴黎西岱大学、法国国家科学研究中心、IMJ-PRG）；Institute for Advanced Study, School of Mathematics（高等研究院数学学院）
Let $X, Y$ be complete, simply connected Riemannian surfaces with pinched negative curvature $-b^2 \leq K \leq -1$. We show that if $f : \partial X \to \partial Y$ is a Moebius homeomorphism between the boundaries at infinity of $X, Y$, then $f$ extends to an isometry $F : X \to Y$. This can be viewed as a generalization of Otal's marked length spectrum rigidity theorem for closed, negatively curved surfaces, in the sense that Otal's theorem asserts that if $X, Y$ admit properly discontinuous, cocompact, free actions by groups of isometries and the boundary map $f$ is Moebius and equivariant w…
We establish a sharp upper-bound for the first non-zero even eigenvalue (corresponding to an even eigenfunction) of the Hilbert-Brunn-Minkowski operator associated to a strongly convex $C^2$-smooth origin-symmetric convex body $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Our isospectral inequality is centro-affine invariant, attaining equality if and only if $K$ is a (centered) ellipsoid; this is reminiscent of the (non affine invariant) classical Szegö--Weinberger isospectral inequality for the Neumann Laplacian. The new upper-bound complements the conjectural lower-bound, which has been shown to be equivalent to …
We use an extension of Sunada's theorem to construct a nonisometric pair of isospectral simply connected domains in the Euclidean plane, thus answering negatively Kac's question, ``can one hear the shape of a drum?'' In order to construct simply connected examples, we exploit the observation that an orbifold whose underlying space is a simply connected manifold with boundary need not be simply connected as an orbifold.
Let $(X, g_0)$ be a simply connected, complete, negatively curved Riemannian manifold. We prove local and infinitesimal rigidity results for compactly supported deformations of the metric $g_0$. For any negatively curved metric $g$ equal to $g_0$ outside a compact, the identity map of $X$ induces a natural boundary map between the boundaries at infinity of $X$ with respect to $g_0$ and $g$. We show that if $(g_t)$ is a smooth 1-parameter family of negatively curved metrics all equal to $g_0$ outside a fixed compact then if all the boundary maps (between the boundaries of $X$ with respect to $g…
We show that a compact Riemannian $3$-manifold $M$ with strictly convex simply connected boundary and sectional curvature $K\leq a\leq 0$ is isometric to a convex domain in a complete simply connected space of constant curvature $a$, provided that $K\equiv a$ on planes tangent to the boundary of $M$. This yields a characterization of strictly convex surfaces with minimal total curvature in Cartan-Hadamard $3$-manifolds, and extends some rigidity results of Greene-Wu, Gromov, and Schroeder-Strake. Our proof is based on a recent comparison formula for total curvature of Riemannian hypersurfaces,…
Let $F^{n+p}(c)$ be an $(n+p)$-dimensional simply connected space form with nonnegative constant curvature $c$. We prove that if $M^n(n\geq4)$ is a compact submanifold in $F^{n+p}(c)$, and if $Ric_M>(n-2)(c+H^2),$ where $H$ is the mean curvature of $M$, then $M$ is homeomorphic to a sphere. We also show that the pinching condition above is sharp. Moreover, we obtain a new differentiable sphere theorem for submanifolds with positive Ricci curvature.
Recall that the radius of a compact metric space $(X, dist)$ is given by $rad\ X = \min_{x\in X} \max_{y\in X} dist(x,y)$. In this paper we generalize Berger's $\frac{1}{4}$-pinched rigidity theorem and show that a closed, simply connected, Riemannian manifold with sectional curvature $\geq 1$ and radius $\geq \fracπ{2}$ is either homeomorphic to the sphere or isometric to a compact rank one symmetric space.
Geodesic balls in a simply connected space forms $\mathbb{S}^n$, $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ or $\mathbb{H}^{n}$ are distinguished manifolds for comparison in bounded Riemannian geometry. In this paper we show that they have the maximum possible boundary volume among Miao-Tam critical metrics with connected boundary provided that the boundary of the manifold is an Einstein hypersurface. In the same spirit we also extend a rigidity theorem due to Boucher et al. \cite{Bou} and Shen \cite{Shen} to $n$-dimensional static metrics with positive constant scalar curvature, which provides another proof of a parti…
Given a geodesic inside a simply-connected, complete, non-positively curved Riemannian (NPCR) manifold M, we get an associated geodesic inside the asymptotic cone Cone(M). Under mild hypotheses, we show that if the latter is contained inside a bi-Lipschitz flat, then the original geodesic supports a non-trivial, orthogonal, parallel Jacobi field. As applications we obtain (1) constraints on the behavior of quasi-isometries between complete, simply connected, NPCR manifolds, and (2) constraints on the NPCR metrics supported by certain manifolds, and (3) a correspondence between metric splitting…
We study the boundary and lens rigidity problems on domains without assuming the convexity of the boundary. We show that such rigidities hold when the domain is a simply connected compact Riemannian surface without conjugate points. For the more general class of non-trapping compact Riemannian surfaces with no conjugate points, we show lens rigidity. We also prove the injectivity of the X-ray transform on tensors in a variety of settings with non-convex boundary and, in some situations, allowing a non-empty trapped set.
Let $M$ be an $n(\geq 4)$-dimensional compact submanifold in the simply connected space form $F^{n+p}(c)$ with constant curvature $c\geq 0$, where $H$ is the mean curvature of $M$. We verify that if the scalar curvature of $M$ satisfies $R>n(n-2)(c+H^2)$, and if $Ric_M\geq (n-2-\frac{2σ_n}{2n-σ_n})(c+H^2)$, then $M$ is homeomorphic to a sphere. Here $σ_n=sgn(n-4)((-1)^n+3)$, and $sgn(\cdot)$ is the standard sign function. This improves our previous sphere theorem \cite{XG2}. It should be emphasized that our pinching conditions above are optimal. We also obtain some new topological sphere theor…
Let $M$ be a pseudo-Hermitian homogeneous space of finite volume. We show that $M$ is compact and the identity component $G$ of the group of holomorphic isometries of $M$ is compact. If $M$ is simply connected, then even the full group of holomorphic isometries is compact. These results stem from a careful analysis of the Tits fibration of $M$, which is shown to have a torus as its fiber. The proof builds on foundational results on the automorphisms groups of compact almost pseudo-Hermitian homogeneous spaces. It is known that a compact homogeneous pseudo-Kähler manifold splits as a product of…
Let $M$ be an $n(\geq3)$-dimensional oriented compact submanifold with parallel mean curvature in the simply connected space form $F^{n+p}(c)$ with $c+H^2>0$, where $H$ is the mean curvature of $M$. We prove that if the Ricci curvature of $M$ satisfies $Ric_{M}\geq(n-2)(c+H^2),$ then $M$ is either a totally umbilic sphere, the Clifford hypersurface $S^{m}\big(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2(c+H^2)}}\big)\times S^{m}\big(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2(c+H^2)}}\big)$ in $S^{n+1}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{c+H^2}})$ with $n=2m$, or $\mathbb{C}P^{2}(4/3(c+H^2))$ in $S^7(\frac{1}{\sqrt{c+H^2}})$. In particular, if $Ric_{M}>(n-2)(c+H^2),$ …
Using elementary comparison geometry, we prove: Let $(M,g)$ be a simply-connected complete Riemannian manifold of dimension $\ge 3$. Suppose that the sectional curvature $K$ satisfies $ -1-s(r) \le K \le -1$, where $r$ denotes distance to a fixed point in $M$. If $\lim_{r \rt \infty} e^{2r}s(r) =0$, then $(M,g)$ has to be isometric to ${\mathbb H}^n$. The same proof also yields that if $K$ satisfies $-s(r) \le K \le 0$ where $\lim_{r \rt \infty} r^2s(r)=0$, then $(M,g)$ is isometric to $\R^n$, a result due to Greene and Wu. Our second result is a local one: Let $(M,g)$ be any Riemannian manifo…
Given a metric space X, one defines its Wasserstein space W2(X) as a set of sufficiently decaying probability measures on X endowed with a metric defined from optimal transportation. In this article, we continue the geometric study of W2(X) when X is a simply connected, nonpositively curved metric spaces by considering its isometry group. When X is Euclidean, the second named author proved that this isometry group is larger than the isometry group of X. In contrast, we prove here a rigidity result: when X is negatively curved, any isometry of W2(X) comes from an isometry of X.
Let M be a complete Riemannian manifold whose sectional curvature is bounded above by 1. We say that M has positive spherical rank if along every geodesic one hits a conjugate point at t=π. The following theorem is then proved: If M is a complete, simply connected Riemannian manifold with upper curvature bound 1 and positive spherical rank, then M is isometric to a compact, rank one symmetric space (CROSS) i.e., isometric to a sphere, complex projective space, quaternionic projective space or to the Cayley plane. The notion of spherical rank is analogous to the notions of Euclidean rank and hy…
We prove some rigidity results for compact manifolds with boundary. In particular for a compact Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and simply connected mean convex boundary, it is shown that if the sectional curvature vanishes on the boundary, then the metric must be flat.
Let $G$ be a simply connected, solvable Lie group and $Γ$ a lattice in $G$. The deformation space $\mathcal{D}(Γ,G)$ is the orbit space associated to the action of $\Aut(G)$ on the space $\mathcal{X}(Γ,G)$ of all lattice embeddings of $Γ$ into $G$. Our main result generalises the classical rigidity theorems of Mal'tsev and Saitô for lattices in nilpotent Lie groups and in solvable Lie groups of real type. We prove that the deformation space of every Zariski-dense lattice $Γ$ in $G$ is finite and Hausdorff, provided that the maximal nilpotent normal subgroup of $G$ is connected. This implies th…
We show that noncompact simply connected harmonic manifolds with volume density $Θ_{p}(r) =\sinh ^{n-1} r$ is isometric to the real hyperbolic space and noncompact simply connected Kähler harmonic manifold with volume density $Θ_{p}(r) =\sinh ^{2n-1} r \cosh r$ is isometric to the complex hyperbolic space. A similar result is also proved for Quaternionic Kähler manifolds. Using our methods we get an alternative proof, without appealing to the powerful Cheeger-Gromoll splitting theorem, of the fact that every Ricci flat harmonic manifold is isometric to the euclidean space. Finally a rigidity r…
For a k-flat F inside a locally compact CAT(0)-space X, we identify various conditions that ensure that F bounds a (k+1)-dimensional half flat in X. Our conditions are formulated in terms of the ultralimit of X. As applications, we obtain (1) constraints on the behavior of quasi-isometries between tocally compact CAT(0)-spaces, (2) constraints on the possible non-positively curved Riemannian metrics supported by certain manifolds, and (3) a correspondence between metric splittings of a complete, simply connected, non-positively curved Riemannian manifold and the metric splittings of its asympt…
We present a rigidity theorem for the action of the mapping class group $π_0(\mathrm{Diff}(M))$ on the space $\mathcal{R}^+(M)$ of metrics of positive scalar curvature for high dimensional manifolds $M$. This result is applicable to a great number of cases, for example to simply connected $6$-manifolds and high dimensional spheres. Our proof is fairly direct, using results from parametrised Morse theory, the $2$-index theorem and computations on certain metrics on the sphere. We also give a non-triviality criterion and a classification of the action for simply connected $7$-dimensional $\mathr…
In classical surface theory there are but few known examples of surfaces admitting nontrivial isometric deformations and fewer still non-simply-connected ones. We consider the isometric deformability question for an immersion x: M \to R^3 of an oriented non-simply-connected surface with constant mean curvature H. We prove that the space of all isometric immersions of M with constant mean curvature H is, modulo congruences of R^3, either finite or a circle. When it is a circle then, for the immersion x, every cycle in M has vanishing force and, when H is not 0, also vanishing torque. Our work g…
We study deformations of irreducible Hermitian symmetric spaces $S$ of the compact type, known to be locally rigid, as projective-algberaic manifolds and prove that no jump of complex structures can occur. For each $S$ of rank $\ge 2$ there is an associated reductive linear group $G$ such that $S$ admits a holomorphic $G$-structure, corresponding to a reduction of the structure group of the tangent bundle. $S$ is characterized as the unique simply-connected compact complex manifold admitting such a $G$-structure which is at the same time integrable. To prove the deformation rigidity of $S$ it …
This work builds on the foundation laid by Gordon and Wilson in the study of isometry groups of solvmanifolds, i.e. Riemannian manifolds admitting a transitive solvable group of isometries. We restrict ourselves to a natural class of solvable Lie groups called almost completely solvable; this class includes the completely solvable Lie groups. When the commutator subalgebra contains the center, we have a complete description of the isometry group of any left-invariant metric using only metric Lie algebra information. Using our work on the isometry group of such spaces, we study quotients of sol…
