We will show that in the conformal class of the standard metric $g_{S^n}$ on $S^n$, the scaling invariant functional $(μ_g(S^n))^{\frac{2m-n}{n}}\int_{S^n}Q_{2m,g}dμ_g$ maximizes at $g_{S^n}$ when $n$ is odd and $m=\frac{n+1}{2}$ or $\frac{n+3}{2}$. For $n$ odd and $m\geq\frac{n+5}{2}$, $g_{S^n}$ is not stable and the functional has no local maximizer. Here $Q_{2m,g}$ is the $2m$th order $Q $-curvature.
We propose further conformal parametrizations for initial data in some modified Einstein gravity theories. Some of them give rise to conformally covariant systems.
We introduce the notion of formally self-adjoint conformally covariant polydifferential operators and give some constructions of families of such operators. In one direction, we show that any homogeneous conformally variational scalar Riemannian invariant (CVI) induces one of these operators. In another direction, we use the ambient metric to give alternative constructions of certain operators produced this way, one of which is a formally self-adjoint, fourth-order, conformally covariant tridifferential operator which should be regarded as the simplest fully nonlinear analogue of the Paneitz o…
We revisit the Lichnerowicz-York method, and an alternative method of York, in order to obtain some conformally covariant systems. This type of parameterization is certainly more natural for non constant mean curvature initial data.
Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension >2. We show that there is a metric h conformal to g and of volume 1 such that the first positive eigenvalue the conformal Laplacian with repect to h is arbitrarily large. A similar statement is proven for the first positive eigenvalue of the Dirac operator on a spin manifold of dimension >1.
Let G be a finite connected simple graph. We define the moduli space of conformal structures on G. We propose a definition of conformally covariant operators on graphs, motivated by [25]. We provide examples of conformally covariant operators, which include the edge Laplacian and the adjacency matrix on graphs. In the case where such an operator has a nontrivial kernel, we construct conformal invariants, providing discrete counterparts of several results in [11,12] established for Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we show that the nodal sets and nodal domains of null eigenvectors are confor…
We study a fractional conformal curvature flow on the standard unit sphere and prove a perturbation result of the fractional Nirenberg problem with fractional exponent $σ\in (1/2,1)$. This extends the result of Chen-Xu (Invent. Math. 187, no. 2, 395-506, 2012) for the scalar curvature flow on the standard unit sphere.
We describe a set of conformally covariant boundary operators associated to the Paneitz operator, in the sense that they give rise to a conformally covariant energy functional for the Paneitz operator on a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary. These operators naturally give rise to a first- and third-order conformally covariant pseudodifferential operator. In the setting of Poincaré--Einstein manifolds, we show that these operators agree with the fractional GJMS operators of Graham and Zworski. We also use our operators to establish some new sharp Sobolev trace inequalities.
In this paper we perform a fine blow-up analysis for a fourth order elliptic equation involving critical Sobolev exponent, related to the prescription of some conformal invariant on the standard sphere. We derive from this analysis some a priori estimates in dimension 5 and 6. On the five dimensionl sphere these a priori estimates combined with the perturbation result of Part I allow us to obtain some existence results. On the six dimensional sphere we prove the existence of at least one solution when an associated index is different from zero.
In this paper we study some fourth order elliptic equation involving the critical Sobolev exponent, related to the prescription of a fourth order conformal invariant on the standard sphere. We use a topological method to prove the existence of at least a solution when the function to be prescribed is close to a constant and a finite dimensional map associated to it has non-zero degree.
We study the problem of prescribing the Paneitz curvature on higher dimensional spheres. Particular attention is paid to the blow-up points, i.e. the critical points at infinity of the corresponding variational problem. Using topological tools and a careful analysis of the gradient flow lines in the neighborhood of such critical points at infinity, we prove some existence results.
A tensor invariant is defined on a quaternionic contact manifold in terms of the curvature and torsion of the Biquard connection involving derivatives up to third order of the contact form. This tensor, called quaternionic contact conformal curvature, is similar to the Weyl conformal curvature in Riemannian geometry and to the Chern-Moser tensor in CR geometry. It is shown that a quaternionic contact manifold is locally quaternionic contact conformal to the standard flat quaternionic contact structure on the quaternionic Heisenberg group, or equivalently, to the standard 3-sasakian structure o…
In this note, we study the connection between the fractional Laplacian operator that appeared in the recent work of Caffarelli-Silvestre and a class of conformally covariant operators in conformal geometry.
In this paper we prove classification results to elliptic fully nonlinear conformal equations on certain subdomains of the sphere with prescribed constant mean curvature on its boundary. Such subdomains are the hemisphere (or a geodesic ball on $\mathbb{S}^n$) of dimension $n\geq 2$ with prescribed constant mean curvature on its boundary, and annular domains with minimal boundary. Our results extend the classifications of Escobar in \cite{E0} when $n\geq 3$, and Hang-Wang in \cite{HaWa} and Jimenez in \cite{J} when $n=2$.
The classical Rankin-Cohen brackets are bi-differential operators from $C^\infty(\mathbb R)\times C^\infty(\mathbb R)$ into $ C^\infty(\mathbb R)$. They are covariant for the (diagonal) action of ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb R)$ through principal series representations. We construct generalizations of these operators, replacing $\mathbb R$ by $\mathbb R^n,$ the group ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb R)$ by the group ${\rm SO}_0(1,n+1)$ viewed as the conformal group of $\mathbb R^n,$ and functions by differential forms.
We investigate the singular sets of solutions of conformally covariant elliptic operators of fractional order with the goal of developing generalizations of some well-known properties of solutions of the singular Yamabe problem.
In this paper we prove that under a lower bound on the Ricci curvature and an asymptotic assumption on the scalar curvature, a complete conformally compact manifold $(M^{n+1},g)$, with a pole $p$ and with the conformal infinity in the conformal class of the round sphere, has to be the hyperbolic space.
Spectrum of a certain class of first order conformally invariant operators on the sphere is explicitly computed. The class contains the (elliptic verions of) Rarita-Schwinger operator and its higher spin analogues.
For all positive integers n we construct a 1-parameter family of conformal tori of revolution in the 3-sphere with n bulges. These tori arise by Darboux transformations of constant mean curvature tori but do not have constant mean curvature in the 3-sphere.
In this paper we give bounds for the first eigenvalue of the conformal Laplacian and the Yamabe invariant of a compact Riemannian manifold, by using conditions on the Ricci curvature and the diameter and deduce certain conditions on the manifold to be conformal to a sphere.
For a surface in 3-sphere, by identifying the conformal round 3-sphere as the projectivized positive light cone in Minkowski 5-spacetime, we use the conformal Gauss map and the conformal transform to construct the associate homogeneous 4-surface in Minkowski 5-spacetime. We then derive the local fundamental theorem for a surface in conformal round 3-sphere from that of the associate 4-surface in Minkowski 5-spacetime. More importantly, following the idea of Fefferman and Graham, we construct local scalar invariants for a surface in conformal round 3-sphere. One distinct feature of our construc…
The aim of this paper is to verify that the study of generic conformally flat hypersurfaces in 4-dimensional space forms is reduced to a surface theory in the standard 3-sphere. The conformal structure of generic conformally flat (local-)hypersurfaces is characterized as conformally flat (local-)3-metrics with the Guichard condition. Then, there is a certain class of orthogonal analytic (local-)Riemannian 2-metrics with constant Gauss curvature -1 such that any 2-metric of the class gives rise to a one-parameter family of conformally flat 3-metrics with the Guichard condition. In this paper, w…
We establish in this paper an upper bound on the second eigenvalue of n-dimensional spheres in the conformal class of the round sphere. This upper bound holds in all dimensions and is asymptotically sharp as the dimension increases.
This is the original manuscript dated March 9th 1983, typeset by the Editors for the Proceedings of the Midwest Geometry Conference 2007 held in memory of Thomas Branson. Stephen Paneitz passed away on September 1st 1983 while attending a conference in Clausthal and the manuscript was never published. For more than 20 years these few pages were circulated informally. In November 2004, as a service to the mathematical community, Tom Branson added a scan of the manuscript to his website. Here we make it available more formally. It is surely one of the most cited unpublished articles. The differe…
We give explicit formulas for all odd order differential intertwinors on the subbundle of the bundle of spinor-$k$-forms that are annihilated by the Clifford multiplication over the odd dimensional standard sphere. The Dirac and Rarita-Schwinger operators appear in the case of $k=0$ and $k=1$, respectively.
In the study of conformal geometry, the method of elliptic partial differential equations is playing an increasingly significant role. Since the solution of the Yamabe problem, a family of conformally covariant operators (for definition, see section 2) generalizing the conformal Laplacian, and their associated conformal invariants have been introduced. The conformally covariant powers of the Laplacian form a family $P_{2k}$ with $k \in \mathbb N$ and $k \leq \frac{n}{2}$ if the dimension $n$ is even. Each $P_{2k}$ has leading order term $(- Δ)^k$ and is equal to $ (- Δ) ^k$ if the metric is fl…
Let $(M,g)$ be a compact Riemannian manifold and $P_g$ an elliptic, formally self-adjoint, conformally covariant operator of order $m$ acting on smooth sections of a bundle over $M$. We prove that if $P_g$ has no rigid eigenspaces (see Definition 2.2), the set of functions $f \in C^\infty(M, R)$ for which $P_{e^fg}$ has only simple non-zero eigenvalues is a residual set in $C^\infty(M,R)$. As a consequence we prove that if $P_g$ has no rigid eigenspaces for a dense set of metrics, then all non-zero eigenvalues are simple for a residual set of metrics in the $C^m$-topology. We also prove that t…
In this paper we study the extent to which conformally compact asymptotically hyperbolic metrics may be characterized intrinsically. Building on the work of the first author, we prove that decay of sectional curvature to -1 and decay of covariant derivatives of curvature outside an appropriate compact set yield Hölder regularity for a conformal compactification of the metric. In the Einstein case, we prove that the estimate on the sectional curvature implies the control of all covariant derivatives of the Weyl tensor, permitting us to strengthen our result.
This is the first of two papers where we address and partially confirm a conjecture of Deser and Schwimmer, originally postulated in high energy physics. The objects of study are scalar Riemannian quantities constructed out of the curvature and its covariant derivatives, whose integrals over compact manifolds are invariant under conformal changes of the underlying metric. Our main conclusion is that each such quantity that locally depends only on the curvature tensor (without covariant derivatives) can be written as a linear combination of the Chern-Gauss-Bonnet integrand and a scalar conforma…
In this paper we use the relationship between conformal metrics on the sphere and horospherically convex hypersurfaces in the hyperbolic space for giving sufficient conditions on a conformal metric to be radial under some constrain on the eigenvalues of its Schouten tensor. Also, we study conformal metrics on the sphere which are invariant by a $k-$parameter subgroup of conformal diffeomorphisms of the sphere, giving a bound on its maximum dimension. Moreover, we classify conformal metrics on the sphere whose eigenvalues of the Shouten tensor are all constant (we call them \emph{isoparametric …
This is the first comprehensive introduction to the authors' recent attempts toward a better understanding of the global concepts behind spinor representations of surfaces in 3-space. The important new aspect is a quaternionic-valued function theory, whose "meromorphic functions" are conformal maps into quaternions, which extends the classical complex function theory on Riemann surfaces. The first results along these lines were presented at the ICM 98 in Berlin. An important new invariant of the quaternionic holomorphic theory is the Willmore energy. For quaternionic holomorphic curves in the …
We propose and discuss recursive formulas for conformally covariant powers $P_{2N}$ of the Laplacian (GJMS-operators). For locally conformally flat metrics, these describe the non-constant part of any GJMS-operator as the sum of a certain linear combination of compositions of lower order GJMS-operators (primary part) and a second-order operator which is defined by the Schouten tensor (secondary part). We complete the description of GJMS-operators by proposing and discussing recursive formulas for their constant terms, i.e., for Branson's $Q$-curvatures, along similar lines. We confirm the pict…
We consider the conformal class of the Riemannian product $g_0 + g$, where $g_0$ is the constant curvature metric on $S^m$ and $g$ is a metric of constant scalar curvature on some closed manifold. We show that the number of metrics of constant scalar curvature in the conformal class grows at least linearly with respect to the square root of the scalar curvature of $g$. This is obtained by studying radial solutions of the equation $Δu -λu + λu^p =0$ on $S^m$, and the number of solutions in terms of $λ$.
In this paper we relate the geometric Poisson brackets on the Grassmannian of 2-planes in R^4 and on the (2,2) Moebius sphere. We show that, when written in terms of local moving frames, the geometric Poisson bracket on the Moebius sphere does not restrict to the space of differential invariants of Schwarzian type. But when the concept of conformal natural frame is transported from the conformal sphere into the Grassmannian, and the Poisson bracket is written in terms of the Grassmannian natural frame, it restricts and results into either a decoupled system or a complexly coupled system of KdV…
The paper builds a DPW approach of Willmore surfaces via conformal Gauss maps. As applications, we provide descriptions of minimal surfaces in $\mathbb R^{n+2}$, isotropic surfaces in $S^4$ and homogeneous Willmore tori via the loop group method. A new example of a Willmore two-sphere in $S^6$ without dual surfaces is also presented.
We study the space of conformal immersions of a 2-torus into the 4-sphere. The moduli space of generalized Darboux transforms of such an immersed torus has the structure of a Riemann surface, the spectral curve. This Riemann surface arises as the zero locus of the determinant of a holomorphic family of Dirac type operators parameterized over the complexified dual torus. The kernel line bundle of this family over the spectral curve describes the generalized Darboux transforms of the conformally immersed torus. If the spectral curve has finite genus the kernel bundle can be extended to the compa…
In this paper we extend some well-known rigidity results for conformal changes of Einstein metrics to the class of generalized quasi-Einstein (GQE) metrics, which includes gradient Ricci solitons. In order to do so, we introduce the notions of conformal diffeomorphisms and vector fields that preserve a GQE structure. We show that a complete GQE metric admits a structure-preserving, non-homothetic complete conformal vector field if and only if it is a round sphere. We also classify the structure-preserving conformal diffeomorphisms. In the compact case, if a GQE metric admits a structure-preser…
A classification scheme of the conformal almost contact metric manifolds with respect to the covariant derivative of the Lee form is given. The subclasses of one basic class and their exact characterizations by the maximal subgroups of the contact conformal group preserving itself are found.
We show that the Teukolsky connection, which defines generalized wave operators governing the behavior of massless fields on Einstein spacetimes of Petrov type D, has its origin in a distinguished conformally and GHP covariant connection on the conformal structure of the spacetime. The conformal class has a (metric compatible) integrable almost-complex structure under which the Einstein space becomes a complex (Hermitian) manifold. There is a unique compatible Weyl connection for the conformal structure, and it leads to the construction of a conformally covariant GHP formalism and a generaliza…
In this note we prove that a fourth order conformal invariant on the product of a circle with an (n-1)-dimensional sphere can be arbitrarily close to that of the n-dimensional sphere, generalizing a result of Schoen about the classical Yamabe invariant.
Geometry of conformal minimal two-spheres immersed in $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$ is studied in this paper by harmonic maps. We construct a non-homogeneous constant curved minimal two-sphere in $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$, and give a classification theorem of linearly full conformal minimal immersions of constant curvature from $S^2$ to $G(2,6;\mathbb{R})$, or equivalently, a complex hyperquadric $Q_{4}$, which illustrates minimal two-spheres of constant curvature in $Q_{4}$ are in general not congruent.
The well known conformal covariance of the Dirac operator acting on spinor fields over a semi Riemannian spin manifold does not extend to powers thereof in general. For odd powers one has to add lower order curvature correction terms in order to obtain conformal covariance. We derive an algorithmic construction in terms of associated tractor bundles to compute these correction terms. Depending on the signature of the semi Riemannian manifold in question, the obtained conformal powers of the Dirac operator turn out to be formally self-adjoint with respect to the $L^2-$scalar product, or formall…
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…
We study integral curvature conditions for a Riemannian metric $g$ on $S^4$ that quantify the best bilipschitz constant between $(S^4,g)$ and the standard metric on $S^4$. Our results show that the best bilipschitz constant is controlled by the $L^2$-norm of the Weyl tensor and the $L^1$-norm of the $Q$-curvature, under the conditions that those quantities are sufficiently small, $g$ has a positive Yamabe constant and the $Q$-curvature is mean-positive. The proof of the result is achieved in two steps. Firstly, we construct a quasiconformal map between two conformally related metrics in a posi…
In this paper we investigate the nature of stationary points of functionals on the space of Riemannian metrics on a smooth compact manifold. Special cases are spectral invariants associated with Laplace or Dirac operators such as functional determinants, and the total Q-curvature. When the functional is invariant under conformal changes of the metric, and the manifold is the standard n-sphere, we apply methods from representation theory to give a universal form of the Hessian of the functional at a stationary point. This reveals a very strong rigidity in the local structure of any such functio…
