Schouten curvature functions on locally conformally flat Riemannian manifolds

Consider a compact Riemannian manifold (M, g) with metric g and dimension n ≥ 3. The Schouten tensor A _g associated with g is a symmetric (0, 2)-tensor field describing the non-conformally-invariant part of the curvature tensor of g. In this paper, we consider the elementary symmetric functions {σ _k (A _g ), 1 ≤ k ≤ n} of the eigenvalues of A _g with respect to g; we call σ _k (A _g ) the k-th Schouten curvature function. We give an isometric classification for compact locally conformally flat manifolds which satisfy the conditions: A _g is semi-positive definite and σ _k (A _g ) is a nonzero constant for some k ∈ {2, ... , n}. If k = 2, we obtain a classification result under the weaker conditions that σ₂(A _g ) is a non-negative constant and (M ⁿ , g) has nonnegative Ricci curvature. The corresponding result for the case k = 1 is well known. We also give an isometric classification for complete locally conformally flat manifolds with constant scalar curvature and non-negative Ricci curvature. Udo Simon: Partially supported by Chinese-German cooperation projects, DFG PI 158/4-4 and PI 158/4-5, and NSFC.     

Pseudo Riemannian manifolds whose generalized Jacobi operator has constant characteristic polynomial

Letg be a non-degenerate innerproduct of signature (p,q) onR ^m . LetGr _r,s (g) be the Grassmanian of planes so the restriction of g to is non-degenerate and has signature (r, s). IfR is an algebraic curvature tensor onR ^m , we define a generalized Jacobi operator onGr _r,s (g) and study when the characteristic polynomial of this operator is constant.Dedicated to Professor Helmut Karzel on his 70th birthdayResearch partially supported by the NSF (USA).Research partially supported by the NFSI (Bulgaria).     

On some hereditary properties of Riemannian g-natural metrics on tangent bundles of Riemannian manifolds

It is well known that if the tangent bundle TM of a Riemannian manifold (M,g) is endowed with the Sasaki metric gs, then the flatness property on TM is inherited by the base manifold [Kowalski, J. Reine Angew. Math. 250 (1971) 124-129]. This motivates us to the general question if the flatness and also other simple geometrical properties remain “hereditary” if we replace gs by the most general Riemannian “g-natural metric” on TM (see [Kowalski and Sekizawa, Bull. Tokyo Gakugei Univ. (4) 40 (1988) 1-29; Abbassi and Sarih, Arch. Math. (Brno), submitted for publication]). In this direction, we prove that if (TM,G) is flat, or locally symmetric, or of constant sectional curvature, or of constant scalar curvature, or an Einstein manifold, respectively, then (M,g) possesses the same property, respectively. We also give explicit examples of g-natural metrics of arbitrary constant scalar curvature on TM.     

Stability problems in a theorem of F. Schur

Schur's theorem states that an isotropic Riemannian manifold of dimension greater than two has constant curvature. It is natural to guess that compact almost isotropic Riemannian manifolds of dimension greater than two are close to spaces of almost constant curvature. We take the curvature anisotropy as the discrepancy of the sectional curvatures at a point. The main result of this paper is that Riemannian manifolds in Cheeger's class ℜ(n,d,V,A) withL ₁-small integral anisotropy haveL _p-small change of the sectional curvature over the manifold. We also estimate the deviation of the metric tensor from that of constant curvature in theW _p ² -norm, and prove that compact almost isotropic spaces inherit the differential structure of a space form. These stability results are based on the generalization of Schur' theorem to metric spaces.     

Classification of pinched positive scalar curvature manifolds

Let (Mn,g), n?3, be a smooth closed Riemannian manifold with positive scalar curvature Rg. There exists a positive constant C=C(M,g) defined by mean curvature of Euclidean isometric immersions, which is a geometric invariant, such that Rg?n(n−1)C. In this paper we prove that Rg=n(n−1)C if and only if (Mn,g) is isometric to the Euclidean sphere Sn(C) with constant sectional curvature C. Also, there exists a Riemannian metric g on Mn such that the scalar curvature satisfies the pinched condition

     

A characterization for isometries and conformal mappings of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds

Generalizing theorems of Myers-Steenrod and of Hawking, we obtain characterizations for isometries and conformal mappings of pseudo-Riemannian spaces (M, g): Define a local distance function on convex normal neighbourhoods by (p, q) =g(exp _p ^–1 q, exp _p ^–1 q). Then every homeomorphismf locally preserving these functions is an isometry. If (M, g) has indefinite signature andf locally preserves distance zero, it is a conformal diffeomorphism.     

On Riemannian g-natural Metrics of the Form a.g s + b.g h + c.g v on the Tangent Bundle of a Riemannian Manifold (M, g)

Let (M, g) be a Riemannian manifold and TM its tangent bundle. In [5] we have investigated the family of all Riemannian g-natural metrics G on TM (which depends on 6 arbitrary functions of the norm of a vector u TM). In this paper, we continue this study under some additional geometric properties, and then we restrict ourselves to the subfamily {G=a.g^s + b.g^h + c.g^v, a, b and c are constants satisfying a > 0 and a(a + c) – b² > 0}. It is known that the Sasaki metric g^s is extremely rigid in the following sense: if (TM, g^s) is a space of constant scalar curvature, then (M, g) is flat. Here we prove, among others, that every Riemannian g-natural metric from the subfamily above is as rigid as the Sasaki metric.     

Generalized gluing for Einstein constraint equations

In this paper we construct a family of new (topologically distinct) solutions to the Einstein constraint equations by performing the generalized connected sum (or fiber sum) of two known compact m-dimensional constant mean curvature solutions (M ₁, g ₁, Π₁) and (M ₂, g ₂,Π₂) along a common isometrically embedded k-dimensional sub-manifold (K, g _K ). Away from the gluing locus the metric and the second fundamental form of the new solutions can be chosen as close as desired to the ones of the original solutions. The proof is essentially based on the conformal method and the geometric construction produces a polyneck between M ₁ and M ₂ whose metric is modeled fiber-wise (i. e. along the slices of the normal fiber bundle of K) around a Schwarzschild metric; for these reasons the codimension n : =  m − k of K in M ₁ and M ₂ is required to be  ≥  3. In this sense our result is a generalization of the Isenberg–Mazzeo–Pollack gluing, which works for connected sum at points and in dimension 3. The solutions we obtain for the Einstein constraint equations can be used to produce new short time vacuum solutions of the Einstein system on a Lorentzian (m + 1)-dimensional manifold, as guaranteed by a well known result of Choquet-Bruhat.     

Ruled surfaces of Weingarten type in Minkowski 3-space

In this paper, we study ruled Weingarten surfaces M : x (s, t) = α(s) + tβ (s) in Minkowski 3-space on which there is a nontrivial functional relation between a pair of elements of the set {K, K_II, H, H_II}, where K is the Gaussian curvature, K_II is the second Gaussian curvature, H is the mean curvature, and H_II is the second mean curvature. We also study ruled linear Weingarten surfaces in Minkowski 3-space such that the linear combination aK_II + bH + cH_II + dK is constant along each ruling for some constants a, b, c, d with a² + b² + c² ≠ 0.     

Angle theorems for the Lagrangian mean curvature flow

We prove that symplectic maps between Riemann surfaces L, M of constant, nonpositive and equal curvature converge to minimal symplectic maps, if the Lagrangian angle for the corresponding Lagrangian submanifold in the cross product space satisfies . If one considers a 4-dimensional K?hler-Einstein manifold of nonpositive scalar curvature that admits two complex structures J, K which commute and assumes that is a compact oriented Lagrangian submanifold w.r.t. J such that the K?hler form w.r.t.K restricted to L is positive and , then L converges under the mean curvature flow to a minimal Lagrangian submanifold which is calibrated w.r.t. . Received: 11 April 2001 / Published online: 29 April 2002     

Pappus type theorems for motions along a submanifold

We study the volumes volume(D) of a domain D and volume(C) of a hypersurface C obtained by a motion along a submanifold P of a space form Mⁿ_λ. We show: (a) volume(D) depends only on the second fundamental form of P, whereas volume(C) depends on all the ith fundamental forms of P, (b) when the domain that we move D₀ has its q-centre of mass on P, volume(D) does not depend on the mean curvature of P, (c) when D₀ is q-symmetric, volume(D) depends only on the intrinsic curvature tensor of P; and (d) if the image of P by the ln of the motion (in a sense which is well-defined) is not contained in a hyperplane of the Lie algebra of SO(n−q−d), and C is closed, then volume(C) does not depend on the ith fundamental forms of P for i>2 if and only if the hypersurface that we move is a revolution hypersurface (of the geodesic (n−q)-plane orthogonal to P) around a d-dimensional geodesic plane.     

η-parallel contact metric spaces

We prove that a contact metric manifold M=(M;η,ξ,φ,g) with η-parallel tensor h is either a K-contact space or a (k,μ)-space, where h denotes, up to a scaling factor, the Lie derivative of the structure tensor φ in the direction of the characteristic vector ξ. In the latter case, its associated CR-structure is in particular integrable.     

An elementary approach to gap theorems

Using elementary comparison geometry, we prove: Let (M, g) be a simply-connected complete Riemannian manifold of dimension ≥ 3. Suppose that the sectional curvature K satisfies −1 − s(r) ≤ K ≤ −1, where r denotes distance to a fixed point in M. If lim _{r → ∞} e^2r s(r) = 0, then (M, g) has to be isometric to ℍ ⁿ . The same proof also yields that if K satisfies −s(r) ≤ K ≤ 0 where lim _{r → ∞} r ² s(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 manifold. For a ∈ ℝ, if K ≤ a on a geodesic ball B _p (R) in M and K = a on ∂B _p (R), then K = a on B _p (R).     

Harnack type inequalities for conformal scalar curvature equation

We derive a Harnack type inequality for the conformal scalar curvature equation on B _3R . If the positive scalar curvature function K(x) is sub-harmonic in a neighborhood of each critical point and the maximum of u over B _R is comparable to its maximum over B _3R , then the Harnack type inequality can be obtained. Zhang is supported by NSF-DMS-0600275.     

Some results on (k, μ)′-almost Kenmotsu manifolds

In this paper, we study the Weyl conformal curvature tensor 𝒲 and the concircular curvature tensor 𝒞 on a (k, μ)′-almost Kenmotsu manifold M²ⁿ⁺¹ of dimension greater than 3. We obtain that if M²ⁿ⁺¹ satisfies either R · 𝒲 = 0 or 𝒞 · 𝒞 = 0, then it is locally isometric to either the hyperbolic space ?²ⁿ⁺¹ (?1) or the Riemannian product ?ⁿ⁺¹(?4) × ?ⁿ.     

Multiple closed geodesics on Riemannian 3-spheres

In this paper, we prove that for every Riemannian Q-homological 3-sphere (M, g) with injectivity radius and the sectional curvature K satisfying there exist at least two geometrically distinct closed geodesics. Yiming Long was partially supported by the 973 Program of MOST, Yangzi River Professorship, NNSF, MCME, RFDP, LPMC of MOE of China, S. S. Chern Foundation, and Nankai University. Wei Wang was partially supported by NNSF, RFDP of MOE of China.     

Curvatures of homogeneous Randers spaces

We study curvatures of homogeneous Randers spaces. After deducing the coordinate-free formulas of the flag curvature and Ricci scalar of homogeneous Randers spaces, we give several applications. We first present a direct proof of the fact that a homogeneous Randers space is Ricci quadratic if and only if it is a Berwald space. We then prove that any left invariant Randers metric on a non-commutative nilpotent Lie group must have three flags whose flag curvature is positive, negative and zero, respectively. This generalizes a result of J.A. Wolf on Riemannian metrics. We prove a conjecture of J. Milnor on the characterization of central elements of a real Lie algebra, in a more generalized sense. Finally, we study homogeneous Finsler spaces of positive flag curvature and particularly prove that the only compact connected simply connected Lie group admitting a left invariant Finsler metric with positive flag curvature is SU(2)$\text{SU}\left(2\right)$.     

Generalized connected sum construction for scalar flat metrics

In this paper we construct constant scalar curvature metrics on the generalized connected sum M = M₁  \sharp_K  M₂{M = M_1 \, \sharp_K \, M_2} of two compact Riemannian scalar flat manifolds (M ₁, g ₁) and (M ₂, g ₂) along a common Riemannian submanifold (K, g _K ) whose codimension is ≥3. Here we present two constructions: the first one produces a family of “small” (in general nonzero) constant scalar curvature metrics on the generalized connected sum of M ₁ and M ₂. It yields an extension of Joyce’s result for point-wise connected sums in the spirit of our previous issues for nonzero constant scalar curvature metrics. When the initial manifolds are not Ricci flat, and in particular they belong to the (1₊) class in the Kazdan–Warner classification, we refine the first construction in order to produce a family of scalar flat metrics on M. As a consequence we get new solutions to the Einstein constraint equations on the generalized connected sum of two compact time symmetric initial data sets, extending the Isenberg–Mazzeo–Pollack gluing construction.     

Integral pinching theorems

Using Hamilton's Ricci flow we shall prove several pinching results for integral curvature. In particular, we show that if p>n/2$ and the L ^p norm of the curvature tensor is small and the diameter is bounded, then the manifold is an infra-nilmanifold. We also obtain a result on deforming metrics to positive sectional curvature. Received: 17 February 1999     

Homotopy of area decreasing maps by mean curvature flow

Let f:M→N$f:M\to N$ be a smooth area decreasing map between two Riemannian manifolds (M,_gM)$(M,{\mathrm{g}}_M)$ and (N,_gN)$(N,{\mathrm{g}}_N)$. Under weak and natural assumptions on the curvatures of (M,_gM)$(M,{\mathrm{g}}_M)$ and (N,_gN)$(N,{\mathrm{g}}_N)$, we prove that the mean curvature flow provides a smooth homotopy of f to a constant map.