In the last two decades, one of the most important developments in Riemannian geometry is the collapsing theory of Cheeger-Fukaya-Gromov. A Riemannian manifold is called (sufficiently) collapsed if its dimension looks smaller than its actual dimension while its sectional curvature remains bounded (say a very thin flat torus looks like a circle in a bared eyes). We will survey the development of collapsing theory and its applications to Riemannian geometry since 1990. The common starting point for all of these is the existence of a singular fibration structure on collapsed manifolds. However, new techniques have been introduced and tools from related fields have been brought in. As a consequence, light has been shed on some classical problems and conjectures whose statements do not involve collapsing. Specifically, substantial progress has been made on manifolds with nonpositive curvature, on positively pinched manifolds, collapsed manifolds with an a priori diameter bound, and subclasses of manifolds whose members satisfy additional topological conditions e.g. $2$-connectedness.
The goal of this paper is to study the stability of pure nilpotent structures on a manifold associated to different collapsed metrics. We prove that if two metrics on a $n$-manifold of bounded sectional curvature are $L_0$-bi-Lipchitz equivalent and sufficient collapsed (depending on $L_0$ and $n$), then up to a diffeomorphism, the underlying nilpotent Killing structures coincide with each other or one is embedded into another as a subsheaf. It improves Cheeger-Fukaya-Gromov's locally compatibility of pure nilpotent Killing structures for one collapsed metric of bounded sectional curvature to …
Using a new type of Jacobi field estimate we will prove a duality theorem for singular Riemannian foliations in complete manifolds of nonnegative sectional curvature.
Let $M^n$ be a complete, non-compact and $C^\infty$-smooth Riemannian manifold with nonnegative sectional curvature. Suppose $\Cal S$ is a soul of $M^n$. Then any distance non-increasing retraction $Ψ: M^n \to \Cal S$ must give rise to a $C^\infty$-smooth Riemannian submersion.
Riemannian manifolds of quasi-constant sectional curvatures (QC-manifolds) are divided into two basic classes: with positive or negative horizontal sectional curvatures. We prove that the Riemannian QC-manifolds with positive horizontal sectional curvatures are locally equivalent to canal hypersurfaces in Euclidean space, while the Riemannian QC-manifolds with negative horizontal sectional curvatures are locally equivalent to canal space-like hypersurfaces in Minkowski space. We prove that the local theory of conformally flat Riemannian manifolds, which can be locally isometrically embedded as…
We study collapsed manifolds with Ricci bounded covering geometry i.e., Ricci curvature is bounded below and the Riemannian universal cover is non-collapsed or consists of uniform Reifenberg points. Via Ricci flows' techniques, we partially extend the nilpotent structural results of Cheeger-Fukaya-Gromov, on collapsed manifolds with (sectional curvature) local bounded covering geometry, to manifolds with (global) Ricci boundedcovering geometry.
This is a survey of recent results on manifolds with positive curvature from a series of lecture given in Guanajuato, Mexico in 2010. It also contains some hitsorical comments.
We study a class of Riemannian manifolds with respect to the covariant derivative of their curvature tensors. We introduce geometrically the class of directed Riemannian manifolds of pointwise constant relative sectional curvature and give a tensor characterization for such manifolds. We prove that all rotational hypersurfaces are directed and find the rotational hypersurfaces of pointwise constant relative sectional curvature. For the class of directed Riemannian manifolds of pointwise constant relative sectional curvature having a totally umbilical scalar distribution we prove a structural t…
J.Eells and L. Lemaire introduced k-harmonic maps, and T. Ichiyama, J. Inoguchi and H.Urakawa showed the first variation formula. In this paper, we describe the ordinary differential equations of $3$-harmonic curves into a Riemannian manifold with constant sectional curvature, and show biharmonic curve is k-harmonic curve $(k\geq 2)$.
We give an estimate of the first eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on a complete noncompact stable minimal hypersurface $M$ in a complete simply connected Riemannian manifold with pinched negative sectional curvature. In the same ambient space, we prove that if a complete minimal hypersurface $M$ has sufficiently small total scalar curvature then $M$ has only one end. We also obtain a vanishing theorem for $L^2$ harmonic 1-forms on minimal hypersurfaces in a Riemannian manifold with sectional curvature bounded below by a negative constant. Moreover we provide sufficient conditions for a minim…
This is an expositiry article on collapsing theory in Riemannian geometry written for the Modern Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics (MEMPhys). We focus on describing the geometric and topological structure of collapsed/non-collapsed regions in Riemannian manifold under various curvature assumptions. Numerous applications of collapsing theory to Riemannian geometry are NOT discussed in this survey.
Let M be a closed 5-manifold of pinched curvature 0<δ\le \text{sec}_M\le 1. We prove that M is homeomorphic to a spherical space form if M satisfies one of the following conditions: (i) δ=1/4 and the fundamental group is a non-cyclic group of order at least C, a constant. (ii) The center of the fundamental group has index at least w(δ), a constant depending on δ. (iii) The ratio of the volume and the maximal injectivity radius is less than ε(δ). (iv) The volume is less than ε(δ) and the fundamental group π_1(M) has a center of index at least w, a universal constant, and π_1(M) is either isomor…
We study the geometry and topology of Riemannian 3-orbifolds which are locally volume collapsed with respect to a curvature scale. We show that a sufficiently collapsed closed 3-orbifold without bad 2-suborbifolds either admits a metric of nonnegative sectional curvature or satisfies Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture. We also prove a version with boundary. Kleiner and Lott independently proved similar results.
In this paper we introduce two new notions of sectional curvature for Riemannian manifolds with density. Under both notions of curvature we classify the constant curvature manifolds. We also prove generalizations of the theorems of Cartan-Hadamard, Synge, and Bonnet-Myers as well as a generalization of the (non-smooth) 1/4-pinched sphere theorem. The main idea is to modify the radial curvature equation and second variation formula and then apply the techniques of classical Riemannian geometry to these new equations.
In this paper, we show that every harmonic map from a compact Kähler manifold with uniformly RC-positive curvature to a Riemannian manifold with non-positive complex sectional curvature is constant. In particular, there is no non-constant harmonic map from a compact Kähler manifold with positive holomorphic sectional curvature to a Riemannian manifold with non-positive complex sectional curvature.
In this paper, we show that a generalized Sasakian space form of dimension greater than three is either of constant sectional curvature; or a canal hypersurface in Euclidean or Minkowski spaces; or locally a certain type of twisted product of a real line and a flat almost Hermitian manifold; or locally a wapred product of a real line and a generalized complex space form; or an $α$-Sasakian space form; or it is of five dimension and admits an $α$-Sasakian Einstein structure. In particular, a local classification for generalized Sasakian space forms of dimension greater than five is obtained. A …
In this paper we determine the topology of three-dimensional complete orientable Riemannian manifolds with a uniform lower bound of sectional curvature whose volume is sufficiently small.
The sectional curvature of a compact Riemannian manifold M can be seen as a random variable on the Grassmann bundle of 2-planes in TM endowed with the Fubini-Study volume density. In this article we calculate the moments of this random variable by integrating suitable local Riemannian invariants and discuss the distribution of the sectional curvature of Riemannian products. Moreover we calculate the moments and the distribution of the sectional curvature for all compact symmetric spaces of rank 1 explicitly and derive a formula for the moments of general symmetric spaces. Interpolating the exp…
We establish new obstruction results to the existence of Riemannian metrics on tori satisfying mixed bounds on both their sectional and Ricci curvatures. More precisely, from Lohkamp's theorem, every torus of dimension at least three admits Riemannian metrics with negative Ricci curvature. We show that the sectional curvature of these metrics cannot be bounded from above by an arbitrarily small positive constant. In particular, if the Ricci curvature of a Riemannian torus is negative, bounded away from zero, then there exist some planar directions in this torus where the sectional curvature is…
J. Eells and L. Lemaire introduced k-harmonic maps, and Wang Shaobo showed the first variational formula. When, k=2, it is called biharmonic maps (2-harmonic maps). There have been extensive studies in the area. In this paper, we consider the relationship between biharmonic maps and k-harmonic maps, and show non-existence theorem of 3-harmonic maps. We also give the definition of k-harmonic submanifolds of Euclidean spaces, and study k-harmonic curve in Euclidean spaces. Futhermore, we give a conjecture for k-harmonic submanifolds of Euclidean spaces.
This paper deals with the computation of sectional curvature for the manifolds of $N$ landmarks (or feature points) in D dimensions, endowed with the Riemannian metric induced by the group action of diffeomorphisms. The inverse of the metric tensor for these manifolds (i.e. the cometric), when written in coordinates, is such that each of its elements depends on at most 2D of the ND coordinates. This makes the matrices of partial derivatives of the cometric very sparse in nature, thus suggesting solving the highly non-trivial problem of developing a formula that expresses sectional curvature in…
In this note we consider versions of both Ricci and sectional curvature pinching for Riemannian manifold with density. In the Ricci curvature case the main result implies a diameter estimate that is new even for compact shrinking Ricci solitons. In the case of sectional curvature we prove a new sphere theorem.
This paper does not contain any new results, it is just an attempt to present, in a systematic way, one construction which establishes an interesting relationship between some ideas and notions well-known in the theory of integrable systems on Lie algebras and a rather different area of mathematics studying projectively equivalent Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian metrics.
Let $M$ be a complete Riemannian manifold possessing a strictly convex Lipschitz continuous exhaustion function. We show that the isoperimetric profile of $M$ is a continuous and non-decreasing function. Particular cases are Hadamard manifolds and complete non-compact manifolds with strictly positive sectional curvatures.
In this paper, we study collapsed manifolds with boundary, where we assume a lower sectional curvature bound, two sides bounds on the second fundamental forms of boundaries and upper diameter bound. Our main concern is the case when inradii of manifolds converge to zero. This is a typical case of collapsing manifolds with boundary. We determine the limit spaces of inradius collapsed manifolds as Alexandrov spaces with curvature uniformly bounded below. When the limit space has co-dimension one, we completely determined the topology of inradius collapsed manifold in terms of singular $I$-bundle…
I study Gromov-Hausdorff limits of complex curves endowed with singular flat metrics of constant diameter. I formulate a criterion that the limit is collapsed in terms of a certain piecewise affine weight function on the dual intersection complex of a semi-stable model of the degeneration introduced by Kontsevich and Soibelman. I describe the collapsed and non-collapsed limits, which are, respectively, metric graphs and finite collections of complex curves with flat metrics glued along finitely many points. I show that the collapsed limit of any positive genus can occur.
Assuming a lower bound on the Ricci curvature of a complete Riemannian manifold, for $p< 1/2$ we show the existence of bounds on the local $L^p$ norm of the Ricci curvature that depend only on the dimension and which improve with volume collapse.
Using recent work of Bettiol, we show that a first-order conformal deformation of Wilking's metric of almost-positive sectional curvature on $S^2\times S^3$ yields a family of metrics with strictly positive average of sectional curvatures of any pair of 2-planes that are separated by a minimal distance in the 2-Grassmanian. A result of Smale's allows us to conclude that every closed simply connected 5-manifold with torsion-free homology and trivial second Stiefel-Whitney class admits a Riemannian metric with a strictly positive average of sectional curvatures of any pair of orthogonal 2-planes…
We obtain inequalities for all Laplace eigenvalues of Riemannian manifolds with an upper sectional curvature bound, whose rudiment version for the first Laplace eigenvalue was discovered by Berger in 1979. We show that our inequalities continue to hold for conformal metrics, and moreover, extend naturally to minimal submanifolds. In addition, we obtain explicit estimates for Laplace eigenvalues of minimal submanifolds in terms of geometric quantities of the ambient space.
A special case of the main result states that a complete $1$-connected Riemannian manifold $(M^n,g)$ is isometric to one of the models $\mathbb R^n$, $S^n(c)$, $\mathbb H^n(-c)$ of constant curvature if and only if every $p\in M^n$ is a non-degenerate maximum of a germ of smooth functions whose Riemannian gradient is a conformal vector field.
B. Wilking introduced the dual foliation associated to a metric foliation in a Riemannian manifold with nonnegative sectional curvature, and proved that when the curvature is strictly positive, the dual foliation contains a single leaf, so that any two points in the ambient space can be joined by a horizontal curve. We show that the same phenomenon often occurs for nonnegatively curved Riemannian submersions even without the strict positive curvature condition, and irrespective of the particular metric.
If the flag curvature of a Finsler manifold reduces to sectional curvature, then locally either the Finsler metric is Riemannian, or the flag curvature is isotropic.
In this paper, we give a new generalization of positive sectional curvature called positive weighted sectional curvature. It depends on a choice of Riemannian metric and a smooth vector field. We give several simple examples of Riemannian metrics which do not have positive sectional curvature but support a vector field that gives them positive weighted curvature. On the other hand, we generalize a number of the foundational results for compact manifolds with positive sectional curvature to positive weighted curvature. In particular, we prove generalizations of Weinstein's theorem, O'Neill's fo…
The authors give a short survey of previous results on $δ$-homogeneous Riemannian manifolds, forming a new proper subclass of geodesic orbit spaces with non-negative sectional curvature, which properly includes the class of all normal homogeneous Riemannian manifolds. As a continuation and an application of these results, they prove that the family of all compact simply connected indecomposable $δ$-homogeneous Riemannian manifolds with positive Euler characteristic, which are not normal homogeneous, consists exactly of all generalized flag manifolds $Sp(l)/U(1)\cdot Sp(l-1)=\mathbb{C}P^{2l-1}$…
In this paper, we show that any compact K$ä$hler manifold homotopic to a compact Riemannian manifold with negative sectional curvature admits a K$ä$hler-Einstein metric of general type. Moreover, we prove that, on a compact symplectic manifold $X$ homotopic to a compact Riemannian manifold with negative sectional curvature, for any almost complex structure $J$ compatible with the symplectic form, there is no non-constant $J$-holomorphic entire curve $f:C \rightarrow X$.
In this paper, we discuss the heat flow of a pseudo-harmonic map from a closed pseudo-Hermitian manifold to a Riemannian manifold with non-positive sectional curvature, and prove the existence of the pseudo-harmonic map which is a generalization of Eells-Sampson's existence theorem. We also discuss the uniqueness of the pseudo-harmonic representative of its homotopy class which is a generalization of Hartman theorem, provided that the target manifold has negative sectional curvature.
A diffeomorphism of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds is called sectional curvature preserving if it preserves the sectional curvature of all the nondegenerate 2-planes. We consider a similar condition for degenerate 2-planes and we prove that the diffeomorphism is conformal (when the condition is fulfilled for weakly degenerate planes) or an isometry (when the condition is fulfilled for strongly degenerate 2-planes).
Fix a number $g>1$, let $S$ be a close surface of genus $g$, and $Teich(S)$ be the Teichmüller space of $S$ endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we show that the Riemannian sectional curvature operator of $Teich(S)$ is non-positive definite. As an application we show that any twist harmonic map from rank-one hyperbolic spaces $H_{Q,m}=Sp(m,1)/Sp(m)\cdot Sp(1)$ or $H_{O,2}=F_{4}^{-20}/SO(9)$ into $Teich(S)$ is a constant.
We study some properties of the tangent bundles with metrics of general natural lifted type. We consider a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ and we find the conditions under which the Riemannian manifold $(TM,G)$, where $TM$ is the tangent bundle of $M$ and $G$ is the general natural lifted metric of $g$, has constant sectional curvature.
We obtain a class of locally symmetric Kaehler Einstein structures on the cotangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold of negative sectional curvature. Similar results are obtained in the case of a Riemannian manifold of positive sectional curvature. The obtained class of Kaehler Einstein structures depends on one essential parameter and cannot have constant holomorphic sectional curvature.
We show that the moduli space of Riemannian metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on certain quotients of Brieskorn varieties in dimension 5 has infinitely many path components. The same is true for the corresponding moduli space of positive Ricci curvature.
We construct a family of non-collapsed, non-Kähler, non-Einstein steady Ricci solitons in even dimensions greater or equal to four. These solitons exist on complex line bundles over Kähler-Einstein manifolds of positive scalar curvature. They include a four-dimensional $U(2)$-invariant, non-collapsed Riemannian steady soliton on each of the line bundles $O(k)$, $k>2$ of $\mathbb{C}P^1$. Finally, we find Taub-Nut like Ricci solitons and demonstrate a new proof for the existence of the Bryant soliton.
We obtain a locally symmetric Kaehler Einstein structure on the cotangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold of negative constant sectional curvature. Similar results are obtained on a tube around zero section in the cotangent bundle, in the case of a Riemannian manifold of positive constant sectional curvature. The obtained Kaehler Einstein structures cannot have constant holomorphic sectional curvature.
In this short note we provide several conjectures on the regularity of measured Gromov-Hausdorff limit spaces of Riemannian manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded below, from the point of view of the synthetic treatment of lower bounds on Ricci curvature for metric measure spaces.
We prove that a 3-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold which is locally collapsed, with respect to a lower curvature bound, is a graph manifold. This theorem was stated by Perelman and was used in his proof of the geometrization conjecture.
Counterexamples to continuity of optimal transportation on Riemannian manifolds with everywhere positive sectional curvature are provided. These examples show that the condition A3w of Ma, Trudinger, & Wang is not guaranteed by positivity of sectional curvature.
We show that in each dimension $4n+3$, $n\ge 1$, there exist infinite sequences of closed smooth simply connected manifolds $M$ of pairwise distinct homotopy type for which the moduli space of Riemannian metrics with nonnegative sectional curvature has infinitely many path components. Closed manifolds with these properties were known before only in dimension seven, and our result does also hold for moduli spaces of Riemannian metrics with positive Ricci curvature. Moreover, in conjunction with work of Belegradek, Kwasik and Schultz, we obtain that for each such $M$ the moduli space of complete…
A Riemannian manifold is called geometrically formal if the wedge product of harmonic forms is again harmonic, which implies in the compact case that the manifold is topologically formal in the sense of rational homotopy theory. A manifold admitting a Riemannian metric of positive sectional curvature is conjectured to be topologically formal. Nonetheless, we show that among the homogeneous Riemannian metrics of positive sectional curvature a geometrically formal metric is either symmetric, or a metric on a rational homology sphere.
