Milnor–Wood inequalities for manifolds locally isometric to a product of hyperbolic planes

This Note describes sharp Milnor–Wood inequalities for the Euler number of flat oriented vector bundles over closed Riemannian manifolds locally isometric to products of hyperbolic planes. One consequence is that such manifolds do not admit an affine structure, confirming Chern–Sullivan's conjecture in this case. The manifolds under consideration are of particular interest, since in contrary to some other locally symmetric spaces they do admit interesting flat vector bundles in the corresponding dimension. When the manifold is irreducible and of higher rank, it is shown that flat oriented vector bundles are determined completely by the sign of the Euler number. To cite this article: M. Bucher, T. Gelander, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 346 (2008).     

The hyperbolic meaning of the Milnor–Wood inequality

We introduce a notion of the twist of an isometry of the hyperbolic plane. This twist function is defined on the universal covering group of orientation-preserving isometries of the hyperbolic plane, at each point in the plane. We relate this function to a function defined by Milnor and generalised by Wood. We deduce various properties of the twist function, and use it to give new proofs of several well-known results, including the Milnor–Wood inequality, using purely hyperbolic-geometric methods. Our methods express inequalities in Milnor’s function as equalities, with the deficiency from equality given by an area in the hyperbolic plane. We find that the twist of certain products found in surface group presentations is equal to the area of certain hyperbolic polygons arising as their fundamental domains.     

Three-step Harmonic Solvmanifolds

The Lichnerowicz conjecture asserted that every harmonic Riemannian manifold is locally isometric to a two-point homogeneous space. In 1992, E. Damek and F. Ricci produced a family of counter-examples to this conjecture, which arise as abelian extensions of two-step nilpotent groups of type-H. In this paper we consider a broader class of Riemannian manifolds: solvmanifolds of Iwasawa type with algebraic rank one and two-step nilradical. Our main result shows that the Damek–Ricci spaces are the only harmonic manifolds of this type.     

Milnor–Thurston homology groups of the Warsaw Circle

Milnor–Thurston homology theory is a construction of homology theory that is based on measures. It is known to be equivalent to singular homology theory in case of manifolds and complexes. Its behaviour for non-tame spaces is still unknown. This paper provides results in this direction. We prove that Milnor–Thurston homology groups for the Warsaw Circle are trivial except for the zeroth homology group which is uncountable-dimensional. Additionally, we prove that the zeroth homology group is non-Hausdorff for this space with respect a natural topology that was proposed by Berlanga.     

Gauss-Bonnet-Chern mass and Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality

This is a survey about our recent works on the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern (GBC) mass for asymptotically flat and asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds. We first introduce the GBC mass, a higher order mass, for asymptotically flat and for asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds, respectively, by using a higher order scalar curvature. Then we prove its positivity and the Penrose inequality for graphical manifolds. One of the crucial steps in the proof of the Penrose inequality is the use of an Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality, which is a classical inequality in the Euclidean space. In the hyperbolic space, we have established this new Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality. We also have a similar work for asymptotically locally hyperbolic manifolds. At the end, we discuss the relation between the GBC mass and Chern’s magic form.     

On Flat Complete Causal Lorentzian Manifolds

We describe up to finite coverings causal flat affine complete Lorentzian manifolds such that the past and the future of any point are closed near this point. We say that these manifolds are strictly causal. In particular, we prove that their fundamental groups are virtually abelian. In dimension 4, there is only one, up to a scaling factor, strictly causal manifold which is not globally hyperbolic. For a generic point of this manifold, either the past or the future is not closed and contains a lightlike straight line     

A generalization of K-contact and (k, μ)-contact manifolds

We study a generalization of K-contact and (k, μ)-contact manifolds, and show that if such manifolds of dimensions ≥ 5 are conformally flat, then they have constant curvature +1. We also show under certain conditions that such manifolds admitting a non-homothetic closed conformal vector field are isometric to a unit sphere. Finally, we show that such manifolds with parallel Ricci tensor are either Einstein, or of zero ${\xi}$ -sectional curvature.     

Coronae of product spaces and the coarse Baum–Connes conjecture

We study the coarse Baum–Connes conjecture for product spaces and product groups. We show that a product of CAT(0) groups, polycyclic groups and relatively hyperbolic groups which satisfy some assumptions on peripheral subgroups, satisfies the coarse Baum–Connes conjecture. For this purpose, we construct and analyze an appropriate compactification and its boundary, “corona”, of a product of proper metric spaces.     

Rigidité conforme des hémisphères {{\rm S}^4_+} et {{\rm S}^6_+}

Let (M, g) be a four or six dimensional compact Riemannian manifold which is locally conformally flat and assume that its boundary is totally umbilical. In this note, we prove that if the Euler characteristic of M is equal to 1 and if its Yamabe invariant is positive, then (M, g) is conformally isometric to the standard hemisphere. As an application and using a result of Hang and Wang (Comm Anal Geom 14(1):91–106, 2006), we prove a rigidity result for these hemispheres regarding the Min-Oo conjecture.     

Complexity of Geometric Three-manifolds

We compute for all orientable irreducible geometric 3-manifolds certain complexity functions that approximate from above Matveev's natural complexity, known to be equal to the minimal number of tetrahedra in a triangulation. We can show that the upper bounds on Matveev's complexity implied by our computations are sharp for thousands of manifolds, and we conjecture they are for infinitely many, including all Seifert manifolds. Our computations and estimates apply to all the Dehn fillings of M 6 ₁ ³ (the complement of the three-component chain-link, conjectured to be the smallest triply cusped hyperbolic manifold), whence to infinitely many among the smallest closed hyperbolic manifolds. Our computations are based on the machinery of the decomposition into ‘bricks’ of irreducible manifolds, developed in a previous paper. As an application of our results we completely describe the geometry of all 3-manifolds of complexity up to 9.     

On product affine hyperspheres in R~(n+1)

In this paper, we study locally strongly convex affine hyperspheres in the unimodular affine space R~(n+1) which, as Riemannian manifolds, are locally isometric to the Riemannian product of two Riemannian manifolds both possessing constant sectional curvature. As the main result, a complete classification of such affine hyperspheres is established. Moreover, as direct consequences, 3-and 4-dimensional affine hyperspheres with parallel Ricci tensor are also classified.     

Conformal vector fields on four–manifolds with negative scalar curvature

We prove a vanishing theorem for conformal vector fields on four–manifolds of negative scalar curvature. Our assumptions are conformally invariant, and in the case of locally conformally flat manifolds reduce to a sign condition on the Euler characteristic. Received April 14, 1998; in final form May 15, 1998     

Locally conformally flat Lorentzian quasi-Einstein manifolds

We show that locally conformally flat quasi-Einstein manifolds are globally conformally equivalent to a space form or locally isometric to a Robertson-Walker spacetime or a $pp$ -wave.     

$ L^2 $-torsion of Hyperbolic Manifolds of Finite Volume

Suppose is a compact connected odd-dimensional manifold with boundary, whose interior M comes with a complete hyperbolic metric of finite volume. We will show that the -topological torsion of and the -analytic torsion of the Riemannian manifold M are equal. In particular, the -topological torsion of is proportional to the hyperbolic volume of M, with a constant of proportionality which depends only on the dimension and which is known to be nonzero in odd dimensions [HS]. In dimension 3 this proves the conjecture [Lü2, Conjecture 2.3] or [LLü, Conjecture 7.7] which gives a complete calculation of the -topological torsion of compact -acyclic 3-manifolds which admit a geometric JSJT-decomposition.?In an appendix we give a counterexample to an extension of the Cheeger-Müller theorem to manifolds with boundary: if the metric is not a product near the boundary, in general analytic and topological torsion are not equal, even if the Euler characteristic of the boundary vanishes. Submitted: March 1998, revised: July 1998.     

Examples of almost Einstein structures on products and in cohomogeneity one

Almost Einstein manifolds are conformally Einstein up to a scale singularity, in general. This notion comes from conformal tractor calculus. In the current paper we discuss almost Einstein structures on closed Riemannian product manifolds and on 4-manifolds of cohomogeneity one. Explicit solutions are found by solving ordinary differential equations. In particular, we construct three families of closed 4-manifolds with almost Einstein structure corresponding to the boundary data of certain unimodular Lie groups. Two of these families are Bach-flat, but neither (globally) conformally Einstein nor half conformally flat. On products with a 2-sphere we find an exotic family of almost Einstein structures with hypersurface singularity as well.     

Subcritical polarisations of symplectic manifolds have degree one

We show that if the complement of a Donaldson hypersurface in a closed, integral symplectic manifold has the homology of a subcritical Stein manifold, then the hypersurface is of degree one. In particular, this demonstrates a conjecture by Biran and Cieliebak on subcritical polarisations of symplectic manifolds. Our proof is based on a simple homological argument using ideas of Kulkarni–Wood.

     

The Conley conjecture for the cotangent bundle

We prove the Conley conjecture for cotangent bundles of oriented, closed manifolds, and Hamiltonians which are quadratic at infinity, i.e., we show that such Hamiltonians have infinitely many periodic orbits. For the conservative systems, similar results have been proven by Lu and Mazzucchelli using convex Hamiltonians and Lagrangian methods. Our proof uses Floer homological methods from Ginzburg’s proof of the Conley conjecture for closed symplectically aspherical manifolds.     

On the asphericity of a symplectic

C. H. Taubes asked whether a closed (i.e. compact and without boundary) connected oriented three-dimensional manifold whose product with a circle admits a symplectic structure must fiber over a circle. An affirmative answer to Taubes' question would imply that any such manifold either is diffeomorphic to the product of a two-sphere with a circle or is irreducible and aspherical. In this paper, we prove that this implication holds up to connect sum with a manifold which admits no proper covering spaces with finite index. It is pointed out that Thurston's geometrization conjecture and known results in the theory of three-dimensional manifolds imply that such a manifold is a three-dimensional sphere. Hence, modulo the present conjectural picture of three-dimensional manifolds, we have shown that the stated consequence of an affirmative answer to Taubes' question holds.

     

Heegaard splittings of twisted torus knots

Little is known on the classification of Heegaard splittings for hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Although Kobayashi gave a complete classification of Heegaard splittings for the exteriors of 2-bridge knots, our knowledge of other classes is extremely limited. In particular, there are very few hyperbolic manifolds that are known to have a unique minimal genus splitting. Here we demonstrate that an infinite class of hyperbolic knot exteriors, namely exteriors of certain “twisted torus knots” originally studied by Morimoto, Sakuma and Yokota, have a unique minimal genus Heegaard splitting of genus two. We also conjecture that these manifolds possess irreducible yet weakly reducible splittings of genus three. There are no known examples of such Heegaard splittings.     

New partially hyperbolic dynamical systems I

We propose a new method for constructing partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms on closed manifolds. As a demonstration of the method we show that there are simply connected closed manifolds that support partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms. Laying aside many surgery constructions of 3-dimensional Anosov flows, these are the first new examples of manifolds which admit partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms in the past forty years.