We show how an operation of inf-convolution can be used to approximate convex functions with $C^{1}$ smooth convex functions on Riemannian manifolds with nonpositive curvature (in a manner that not only is explicit but also preserves some other properties of the original functions, such as ordering, symmetries, infima and sets of minimizers), and we give some applications.
We give a classification for connected complete locally irreducible Riemannian manifolds with nonpositive curvature operator, which admit a nonzero closed or co-closed conformal Killing $L^{2}-$form. Moreover, we prove vanishing theorems for closed and co-closed conformal Killing $L^{2}-$forms on some complete Riemannian manifolds.
We prove the nonexistence of a proper singular Riemannian foliation admitting section in compact manifolds of nonpositive curvature. Then we give a global description of proper singular Riemannian foliations admitting sections on Hadamard manifolds. In addition by using the theory of taut immersions we provide a short proof of this result in the special case of a polar action.
The flag curvature is a natural extension of the sectional curvature in Riemannian geometry, and the S-curvature is a non-Riemannian quantity which vanishes for Riemannian metrics. There are (incomplete) non-Riemannian Finsler metrics on an open subset in R^n with negative flag curvature and constant S-curvature. In this paper, we are going to show a global rigidity theorem that every Finsler metric with negative flag curvature and constant S-curvature must be Riemannian if the manifold is compact. We also study the nonpositive flag curvature case.
On R^n endowed with a riemannian metric of bounded nonpositive curvature, the weakly convex closed subsets are topologically trivial. The stability of such subsets under intersection characterizes the euclidean spaces.
An old problem asks whether a Riemannian manifold can be isospectral to a Riemannian orbifold with nontrivial singular set. In this short note we show that under the assumption of Schanuel's conjecture in transcendental number theory, this is impossible whenever the orbifold and manifold in question are length-commensurable compact locally symmetric spaces of nonpositive curvature associated to simple Lie groups.
Combining several previously known arguments, we prove marked length spectrum rigidity for surfaces with nonpositively curved Riemannian metrics away from a finite set of cone-type singularities with cone angles $>2π$. With an additional condition, we can weaken the requirement on one metric to `no conjugate points.'
We show that on compact Riemann surfaces of nonpositive curvature, the generalized periods, i.e. the $ν$-th order Fourier coefficients of eigenfunctions $e_λ$ over a closed smooth curve $γ$ which satisfies a natural curvature condition, go to 0 at the rate of $O((\logλ)^{-1/2})$, if $0<|ν|/λ<1-δ$, for any fixed $0<δ<1$. Our result implies, for instance, the generalized periods over geodesic circles on any surfaces with nonpositive curvature would converge to zero at the rate of $O((\logλ)^{-1/2})$. A direct corollary of our results and the QER theorem of Toth and Zelditch is that for a geodesi…
We study algebraic conditions on a group G under which every properly discontinuous, isometric G-action on a Hadamard manifold has a G-invariant Busemann function. For such G we prove the following structure theorem: every open complete nonpositively curved Riemannian K(G,1) manifold that is homotopy equivalent to a finite complex of codimension >2 is an open regular neighborhood of a subcomplex of the same codimension. In this setting we show that each tangential homotopy type contains infinitely many open K(G,1) manifolds that admit no complete nonpositively curved metric even though their u…
In this article, we consider a closed rank one $C^\infty$ Riemannian manifold $M$ of nonpositive curvature and its universal cover $X$. Let $b_t(x)$ be the Riemannian volume of the ball of radius $t>0$ around $x\in X$, and $h$ the topological entropy of the geodesic flow. We obtain the following Margulis-type asymptotic estimates \[\lim_{t\to \infty}b_t(x)/\frac{e^{ht}}{h}=c(x)\] for some continuous function $c: X\to \mathbb{R}$. We prove that the Margulis function $c(x)$ is in fact $C^1$. If $M$ is a surface of nonpositive curvature without flat strips, we show that $c(x)$ is constant if and …
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,…
A Riemannian manifold is called harmonic if its volume density function expressed in polar coordinates centered at any point is radial. Flat and rank-one symmetric spaces are harmonic. The converse (the Lichnerowicz Conjecture) is true for manifolds of nonnegative scalar curvature and for some other classes of manifolds, but is not true in general: there exists a family of homogeneous harmonic spaces, the Damek-Ricci spaces, containing noncompact rank-one symmetric spaces, as well as infinitely many nonsymmetric examples. We prove that a harmonic homogeneous manifold of nonpositive curvature i…
In the context of Thurstons geometrisation program we address the question which compact aspherical 3-manifolds admit Riemannian metrics of nonpositive curvature. We show that non-geometric Haken manifolds generically, but not always, admit such metrics. More precisely, we prove that a Haken manifold with, possibly empty, boundary of zero Euler characteristic admits metrics of nonpositive curvature if the boundary is non-empty or if at least one atoroidal component occurs in its canonical topological decomposition. Our arguments are based on Thurstons Hyperbolisation Theorem. We give examples …
We construct examples of smooth 4-dimensional manifolds M supporting a locally CAT(0)-metric, whose universal cover X satisfy Hruska's isolated flats condition, and contain 2-dimensional flats F with the property that the boundary at infinity of F defines a nontrivial knot in the boundary at infinity of X. As a consequence, we obtain that the fundamental group of M cannot be isomorphic to the fundamental group of any Riemannian manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. In particular, M is a locally CAT(0)-manifold which does not support any Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvatu…
We obtain restrictions on the topology of a closed connected manifold B that bounds a (possibly noncompact) manifold whose interior V admits a complete Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvature. If G denotes the fundamental group of B, then a sample result is that B must be aspherical and incompressible if one of the following is true: (1) V has finite volume and G is virtually nilpotent, (2) G is virtually nilpotent and has no proper torsion-free quotients, (3) G is isomorphic to a uniform, irreducible lattice of real rank > 1.
We prove that a Finsler metric is nonpositively curved in the sense of Busemann if and only if it is affinely equivalent to a Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvature. In other terms, such Finsler metrics are precisely Berwald metrics of nonpositive flag curvature. In particular in dimension 2 every such metric is Riemannian or locally isometric to that of a normed plane. In the course of the proof we obtain new characterizations of Berwald metrics in terms of the so-called linear parallel transport.
If $π:M\rightarrow B$ is a Riemannian Submersion and $M$ has positive sectional curvature, O'Neill's Horizontal Curvature Equation shows that $B$ must also have positive curvature. We show there are Riemannian submersions from compact manifolds with positive Ricci curvature to manifolds that have small neighborhoods of (arbitrarily) negative Ricci curvature, but that there are no Riemannian submersions from manifolds with positive Ricci curvature to manifolds with nonpositive Ricci curvature.
Fifty years ago, Eells and Sampson have proved a famous theorem in which they argued that any harmonic mapping $f:(M,g) \rightarrow (\bar{M},\bar{g})$ is totally geodesic if $(M, g)$ is a compact manifold with the nonnegative Ricci tensor and the section curvature of $(\bar{M},\bar{g})$ is nonpositive. Moreover, other main results of the theory of harmonic mappings "in the large" are the results on harmonic maps into nonpositively curved Riemannian manifolds. In our paper we develop a theory of harmonic mappings into Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature. In particular, we …
We obtain some estimates on the area of the boundary and on the volume of a certain free boundary hypersurface $Σ$ with nonpositive Yamabe invariant in a Riemannian $n$-manifold with bounds for the scalar curvature and the mean curvature of the boundary. Assuming further that $Σ$ is locally volume-minimizing in a manifold $M^n$ with scalar curvature bounded below by a nonpositive constant and mean convex boundary, we conclude that locally $M$ splits along $Σ$. In the case that the scalar curvature of $M$ is at least $-n(n-1)$ and $Σ$ locally minimizes a certain functional inspired by [30], a n…
We show that on compact Riemann surfaces of negative curvature, the generalized periods, i.e. the $ν$-th order Fourier coefficient of eigenfunctions $e_λ$ over a period geodesic $γ$ goes to 0 at the rate of $O((\logλ)^{-1/2})$, if $0<ν<c_0λ$, given any $0<c_0<1$. No such result is possible for the sphere $S^2$ or the flat torus $\mathbb T^2$. Combined with the quantum ergodic restriction result of Toth and Zelditch, our results imply that for a generic closed geodesic $γ$ on a compact hyperbolic surface, the restriction $e_{λ_j}|_γ$ of an orthonormal basis $\{e_{λ_j}\}$ has a full density subs…
This paper connects nonpositive sectional curvature of a Riemannian manifold with the displacement convexity of the variance functional on the space $P(M)$ of probability measures over $M$. We show that $M$ has nonpositive sectional curvature and has trivial topology (i.e, is homeomorphic to $\mathbf{R}^n$) if and only if the variance functional on $P(M)$ is displacement convex. This is followed by a Jensen type inequality for the variance functional with respect to Wasserstein barycenters, as well as by a result comparing the variance of the Wasserstein and linear barycenters of a probability…
In this paper we study submanifold with nonpositive extrinsic curvature in a positively curved manifold. Among other things we prove that, if $K\subset (S^n, g)$ is a totally geodesic submanifold in a Riemannian sphere with positive sectional curvature where $n\ge 5$, then $K$ is homeomorphic to $S^{n-2}$ and the fundamental group of the knot complement $π_1(S^n-K)\cong \Bbb Z$.
We associate to any Riemannian symmetric space (of finite or infinite dimension) a L$^*$-algebra, under the assumption that the curvature operator has a fixed sign. L$^*$-algebras are Lie algebras with a pleasant Hilbert space structure. The L$^*$-algebra that we construct is a complete local isomorphism invariant and allows us to classify Riemannian symmetric spaces with fixed-sign curvature operator. The case of nonpositive curvature is emphasized.
In this short note we study nonexistence result of biharmonic maps from a complete Riemannian manifold into a Riemannian manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature. Assume that $ϕ:(M,g)\to (N, h)$ is a biharmonic map, where $(M, g)$ is a complete Riemannian manifold and $(N,h)$ a Riemannian manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature, we will prove that $ϕ$ is a harmonic map if one of the following conditions holds: (i) $|dϕ|$ is bounded in $L^q(M)$ and $ \int_M|τ(ϕ)|^pdv_g<\infty, $ for some $1\leq q\leq\infty$, $1< p<\infty$; or (ii) $Vol(M)=\infty$ and $ \int_M|τ(ϕ)|^pdv_g<\infty, $ fo…
This article studies the Dirichlet problem for a class of degenerate fully nonlinear elliptic equations on Riemannian manifolds with \textit{mean concave} boundary in the sense that the mean curvature of the boundary is \textit{nonpositive}. The proof is primarily based on a quantitative boundary estimate. Also, we obtain analogous results in complex variables. In Appendix, the subsolutions are also constructed on certain topologically product manifolds.
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…
We study biharmonic hypersurfaces and biharmonic submanifolds in a Riemannian manifold. One of interesting problems in this direction is Chen's conjecture which says that any biharmonic submanifold in a Euclidean space is minimal. From the invariant equation for biharmonic submanifolds, we derive a fundamental identity involving the mean curvature vector field, and using this, we prove Chen's conjecture on biharmonic submanifolds in a Euclidean space. More generally, it is proved that any biharmonic submanifold in a space form of nonpositively sectional curvature is minimal. Furthermore we pro…
We give a classification of many closed Riemannian manifolds M whose universal cover possesses a nontrivial amount of symmetry. More precisely, we consider closed Riemannian manifolds $M$ such that Isom$(\widetilde{M})$ has noncompact connected components. We prove that in many cases, such a manifold is as a fiber bundle over a locally homogeneous space. This is inspired by work of Eberlein (for nonpositively curved manifolds) and Farb-Weinberger (for aspherical manifolds), and generalizes work of Frankel (for a semisimple group action). As an application, we characterize simply-connected Riem…
We propose a model for a growth competition between two subsets of a Riemannian manifold. The sets grow at two different rates, avoiding each other. It is shown that if the competition takes place on a surface which is rotationally symmetric about the starting point of the slower set, then if the surface is conformally equivalent to the Euclidean plane, the slower set remains in a bounded region, while if the surface is nonpositively curved and conformally equivalent to the hyperbolic plane, both sets may keep growing indefinitely.
We study compact Riemannian manifolds for which the light between any pair of points is blocked by finitely many point shades. Compact flat Riemannian manifolds are known to have this finite blocking property. We conjecture that amongst compact Riemannian manifolds this finite blocking property characterizes the flat metrics. Using entropy considerations, we verify this conjecture amongst metrics with nonpositive sectional curvatures. Using the same approach, K. Burns and E. Gutkin have independently obtained this result. Additionally, we show that compact quotients of Euclidean buildings have…
In this paper we examine different aspects of the geometry of closed conformal vector fields on Riemannian manifolds. We begin by getting obstructions to the existence of closed conformal and nonparallel vector fields on complete manifolds with nonpositive Ricci curvature, thus generalizing a theorem of T. K. Pan. Then we explain why it is so difficult to find examples, other than trivial ones, of spaces having at least two closed, conformal and homothetic vector fields. We then focus on isometric immersions, firstly generalizing a theorem of J. Simons on cones with parallel mean curvature to …
In this paper we construct and study isoperimetric functions at infinity for Hadamard manifolds. These quasi-isometry invariants give a measure of the spread of geodesics in such a manifold.
Let $(M,g)$ be a two-dimensional compact boundaryless Riemannian manifold with nonpostive curvature, then we shall give improved estimates for the $L^2$-norms of the restrictions of eigenfunctions to unit-length geodesics, compared to the general results of Burq, Gérard and Tzvetkov \cite{burq}. By earlier results of Bourgain \cite{bourgainef} and the first author \cite{Sokakeya}, they are equivalent to improvements of the general $L^p$-estimates in \cite{soggeest} for $n=2$ and $2<p<6$. The proof uses the fact that the exponential map from any point in $x_0\in M$ is a universal covering map f…
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, n…
In this paper, we prove that the class of bi-f-harmonic maps and that of f-biharmonic maps from a conformal manifold of dimension not equal to 2 are the same (Theorem 1.1). We also give several results on nonexistence of proper bi-f-harmonic maps and f-biharmonic maps from complete Riemannian manifolds into nonpositively curved Riemannian manifolds. These include: any bi-f-harmonic map from a compact manifold into a non-positively curved manifold is f-harmonic (Theorem 1.6), and any f-biharmonic (respectively, bi-f-harmonic) map with bounded f and bounded f-bienrgy (respectively, bi-f-energy) …
We define a formal Riemannian metric on a given conformal class of metrics on a closed Riemann surface. We show interesting formal properties for this metric, in particular the curvature is nonpositive and the Liouville energy is geodesically convex. The geodesic equation for this metric corresponds to a degenerate elliptic fully nonlinear PDE, and we prove that any two points are connected by a $C^{1,1}$ geodesic. Using this we can define a length space structure on the given conformal class. We present a different approach to the uniformization theorem by studying the negative gradient flow …
We study the size of the isometry group Isom(M, g) of Riemannian manifolds (M, g) as g varies. For M not admitting a circle action, we show that the order of Isom(M, g) can be universally bounded in terms of the bounds on Ricci curvature, diameter, and injectivity radius of M. This generalizes results known for negative Ricci curvature to all manifolds. More generally we establish a similar universal bound on the index of the deck group pi_1(M) in the isometry group Isom(X, g) of the universal cover X in the absence of suitable actions by connected groups. We apply this to characterize locally…
We study a form of cyclic pursuit on Riemannian manifolds with positive injectivity radius. We conjecture that on a compact manifold, the piecewise geodesic loop formed by connecting consecutive pursuit agents either collapses in finite time or converges to a closed geodesic. The main result is that this conjecture is valid for nonpositively curved compact manifolds.
In this paper, we introduce the weighted mixed (sectional, Ricci and scalar) curvature of a foliated (and almost-product) Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ equipped with a vector field $X$. We define several functions ($q$th Ricci type curvatures), which "interpolate" between the weighed sectional and Ricci curvatures. The novel concepts of the "mixed curvature-dimension" condition and "synthetic dimension of a distribution" allow us to update the estimate of the diameter of a compact Riemannian foliation and to prove new splitting theorems for almost-product manifolds of nonnegative/nonpositive wei…
We obtain an explicit formula for comparing total curvature of level sets of functions on Riemannian manifolds, and develop some applications of this result to the isoperimetric problem in spaces of nonpositive curvature.
We shall prove that under some volume growth condition, the essential spectrum of the Laplacian contains the interval $[(n-1)^2K/4, \infty)$ if an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold has an end and the average of the part of the Ricci curvature on the end which lies below a nonpositive constant $(n-1)K$ converges to zero at infinity.
This paper is to study the conformal scalar curvature equation on complete noncompact Riemannian manifold of nonpositive curvature. We derive some estimates and properties of supersolutions of the scalar curvature equation, and obtain some nonexistence results for complete solutions of scalar curvature equation.
We consider operators $L$ acting on functions on a Riemannian surface, $Σ$, of the form $L = Δ+ V +a K.$ Here $Δ$ is the Laplacian of $Σ$, $V$ a non-negative potential on $Σ$, K the Gaussian curvature and $a$ is a non-negative constant. Such operators $L$ arise as the stability operator of $Σ$ immersed in a Riemannian 3-manifold with constant mean curvature (for particular choices of $V$ and $a$). We assume L is nonpositive acting on functions compactly supported on $Σ$ and we obtain results in the spirit of some theorems of Ficher-Colbrie-Schoen, Colding-Minicozzi, and Castillon. We extend th…
This paper begins the study of relations between Riemannian geometry and global properties of contact structures on 3-manifolds. In particular we prove an analog of the sphere theorem from Riemannian geometry in the setting of contact geometry. Specifically, if a given three dimensional contact manifold (M,ξ) admits a complete compatible Riemannian metric of positive 4/9-pinched curvature then the underlying contact structure ξis tight; in particular, the contact structure pulled back to the universal cover is the standard contact structure on S^3. We also describe geometric conditions in dime…
For a manifold with nonpositive curvature, the Martin boundary is described by the behavior of normalized Green's functions at infinity. A classical result by Anderson and Schoen states that if the manifold has pinched negative curvature, the geometric boundary is the same as the Martin boundary. In this paper, we study the Martin boundary for rank 1 manifolds admitting compact quotients. It is proved that a residual set in the geometric boundary can be identified naturally with a subset of the Martin boundary. This gives a partial answer to one of the open problems in geometry collected by Ya…
In the asymptotically locally hyperbolic setting it is possible to have metrics with scalar curvature at least -6 and negative mass when the genus of the conformal boundary at infinity is positive. Using inverse mean curvature flow, we prove a Penrose inequality for these negative mass metrics. The motivation comes from a previous result of P. Chruściel and W. Simon, which states that the Penrose inequality we prove implies a static uniqueness theorem for negative mass Kottler metrics.
We use the Gauss-Bonnet theorem and the triangle comparison theorems of Rauch and Toponogov to show that on compact Riemann surfaces of negative curvature period integrals of eigenfunctions $e_λ$ over geodesics go to zero at the rate of $O((\logλ)^{-1/2})$ if $λ$ are their frequencies. As discussed in \cite{CSPer}, no such result is possible in the constant curvature case if the curvature is $\ge0$. Notwithstanding, we also show that these bounds for period integrals are valid provided that integrals of the curvature over all geodesic balls of radius $r\le 1$ are pinched from above by $-δr^N$ …
It is a classical fact that the cotangent bundle $T^* \M$ of a differentiable manifold $\M$ enjoys a canonical symplectic form $Ω^*$. If $(\M,\j,g,ω)$ is a pseudo-Kähler or para-Kähler $2n$-dimensional manifold, we prove that the tangent bundle $T\M$ also enjoys a natural pseudo-Kähler or para-Kähler structure $(\J,\G,Ω)$, where $Ω$ is the pull-back by $g$ of $Ω^*$ and $\G$ is a pseudo-Riemannian metric with neutral signature $(2n,2n)$. We investigate the curvature properties of the pair $(\J,\G)$ and prove that: $\G$ is scalar-flat, is not Einstein unless $g$ is flat, has nonpositive (resp.\ …
Let $M$ be an $n$-dimensional complete simply connected Riemannian manifold with sectional curvature bounded above by a nonpositive constant $-κ^2$. Using the cone total curvature $TC(Γ)$ of a graph $Γ$ which was introduced by Gulliver and Yamada Math. Z. 2006, we prove that the density at any point of a soap film-like surface $Σ$ spanning a graph $Γ\subset M$ is less than or equal to $\frac{1}{2π}\{TC(Γ) - κ^{2}\area(p\mbox{$\times\hspace*{-0.178cm}\times$}Γ)\}$. From this density estimate we obtain the regularity theorems for soap film-like surfaces spanning graphs with small total curvature…
The set of totally geodesic representatives of a homotopy class of maps from a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonnegative Ricci curvature into a complete Riemannian manifold $N$ with no focal points is path-connected and, when nonempty, equal to the set of energy-minimizing maps in that class. When $N$ is compact, each map from a product $W \times M$ into $N$ is homotopic to a map that's totally geodesic on each $M$-fiber. These results may be used to extend to the case of no focal points a number of splitting theorems of Cao-Cheeger-Rong about manifolds with nonpositive sectional curvat…
We say that a Riemannian manifold M has rank at least k if every geodesic in M admits at least k parallel Jacobi fields. The Rank Rigidity Theorem of Ballmann and Burns-Spatzier, later generalized by Eberlein-Heber, states that a complete, irreducible, simply connected Riemannian manifold M of rank at least 2 (the higher rank assumption), whose isometry group satisfies the condition that the recurrent vectors are dense in the unit tangent bundle SM (the duality condition), is a symmetric space of noncompact type. This includes, for example, higher rank M which admit a finite volume quotient. W…
We study complete, finite volume $n$-manifolds $M$ of bounded nonpositive sectional curvature. A classical theorem of Gromov says that if such $M$ has negative curvature then it is homeomorphic to the interior of a compact manifold-with-boundary, and we denote this boundary $\partial M$. If $n\geq 3$, we prove that the universal cover of the boundary $\widetilde{\partial M}$ and also the $π_1M$-cover of the boundary $\partial\widetilde M$ have vanishing $(n-2)$-dimensional homology. For $n=4$ the first of these recovers a result of Nguyen Phan saying that each component of the boundary $\parti…
A complete Riemannian manifold without conjugate points is called asymptotically harmonic if the mean curvature of its horospheres is a universal constant. Examples of asymptotically harmonic manifolds include flat spaces and rank one locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type. In this paper we show that this list exhausts the compact asymptotically harmonic manifolds under a variety of assumptions including nonpositive curvature or Gromov hyperbolic fundamental group. We then present a new characterization of symmetric spaces amongst the set of all visibility manifolds
