RC-positivity and rigidity of harmonic maps into Riemannian manifolds Dedicated to Professor Lo Yang on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

In this paper,we show that every harmonic map from a compact K?hler 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 Koahler manifold with positive holomorphic sectional curvature to a Riemannian manifold with non-positive complex sectional curvature.     

On the isospectral orbifold–manifold problem for nonpositively curved locally symmetric 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.     

On the existence of complete Kähler metrics of negative Riemannian curvature bounded away from zero on ellipsoidal domains inC n

Summary The purpose of this paper is to prove that every ellipsoidal domain in Cⁿ admits a complete Kähler metric whose Riemannian sectional curvature is bounded from above by a negative constant (Theorem 1). We construct a Kähler metric, in a natural way, as potential of a suitable function defining the boundary (§2). Directly we compute the curvature tensor and we find upper and lower bounds for the holomorphic sectional curvature (§ 4, § 5). In order to prove the boundness of Riemannian sectional curvature we use finally a classical pinching argument (§ 6). We also obtain that for certain ellipsoidal domains the curvature tensor is very strongly negative in the sense of [15] (§ 3). Finally we prove that the metric constructed on ellipsoidal domains in Cⁿ is the Bergman metric if and only if the domain is biholomorphic to the ball (Theorem 2). In [8], [9] R. E. Greene and S. G. Krantz gave large families of examples of complete Kähler manifolds with Riemannian sectional curvature bounded from above by a negative constant; they are sufficiently small deformations of the ball in Cⁿ, with the Bergman metric. Before the only known example of complete simply-connected Kähler manifold with Riemannian sectional curvature upper bounded by a negative constant, not biholomorphic to the ball, was the surface constructed by G. D. Mostow and Y. T. Siu in [14], to the best of the author's knowledge, is not known at present if this example is biholomorphic to a domain in Cⁿ.     

Harmonic maps from closed Riemannian manifolds with positive scalar curvature

It is well known there is no non-constant harmonic map from a closed Riemannian manifold of positive Ricci curvature to a complete Riemannian manifold with non-positive sectional curvature. By reducing the assumption on the Ricci curvature to one on the scalar curvature, such vanishing theorem cannot hold in general. This raises the question: “What information can we obtain from the existence of non-constant harmonic map?” This paper gives answer to this problem; the results obtained are optimal.     

Spectral Bounds on Orbifold Isotropy

We first show that a Laplace isospectral family of Riemannian orbifolds, satisfying a lower Ricci curvature bound, contains orbifolds with points of only finitely many isotropy types. If we restrict our attention to orbifolds with only isolated singularities, and assume a lower sectional curvature bound, then the number of singular points in an orbifold in such an isospectral family is universally bounded above. These proofs employ spectral theory methods of Brooks, Perry and Petersen, as well as comparison geometry techniques developed by Grove and Petersen.This research was partially supported by NSF grant DMS 0072534.     

A note on the almost-one-half holomorphic pinching

Motivated by a previous work by Zheng and the second-named author, we study pinching constants of compact Kähler manifolds with positive holomorphic sectional curvature. In particular, we prove a gap theorem on Kähler manifolds with almost-one-half pinched holomophic sectional curvature. The proof is motivated by the work of Petersen and Tao on Riemannian manifolds with almost-quarter-pinched sectional curvature.     

Geometrically Formal Homogeneous Metrics of Positive Curvature

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.     

Convexity and Some Geometric Properties

The main goal of this paper is to present results of existence and nonexistence of convex functions on Riemannian manifolds, and in the case of the existence, we associate such functions to the geometry of the manifold. Precisely, we prove that the conservativity of the geodesic flow on a Riemannian manifold with infinite volume is an obstruction to the existence of convex functions. Next, we present a geometric condition that ensures the existence of (strictly) convex functions on a particular class of complete manifolds, and we use this fact to construct a manifold whose sectional curvature assumes any real value greater than a negative constant and admits a strictly convex function. In the last result, we relate the geometry of a Riemannian manifold of positive sectional curvature with the set of minimum points of a convex function defined on the manifold.     

You can hear the local orientability of an orbifold

A Riemannian orbifold is a mildly singular generalization of a Riemannian manifold which is locally modeled on the quotient of a connected, open manifold under a finite group of isometries. If all of the isometries used to define the local structures of an entire orbifold are orientation preserving, we call the orbifold locally orientable. We use heat invariants to show that a Riemannian orbifold which is locally orientable cannot be Laplace isospectral to a Riemannian orbifold which is not locally orientable. As a corollary we observe that a Riemannian orbifold that is not locally orientable cannot be Laplace isospectral to a Riemannian manifold.     

K-spaces of constant holomorphic sectional curvature

In this note we prove the equivalence of the pointwise constancy and the global constancy of the holomorphic sectional curvature of a K-space. A criterion for the constancy of the holomorphic sectional curvature of a K-space is found. It is proved that every proper K-space of constant holomorphic sectional curvature is a six-dimensional orientable Riemannian manifold of constant positive curvature, which is isometric with the six-dimensional sphere in the case of completeness and connectedness.Translated from Matematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. 805–814, May, 1976.In conclusion I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to A. M. Vasil'ev for help in the preparation of this note.     

Manifolds with pinched 2-positive curvature operator

In this paper, we show that any complete Riemannian manifold of dimension great than 2 must be compact if it has positive complex sectional curvature and ??-pinched 2-positive curvature operator, namely, the sum of the two smallest eigenvalues of curvature operator are bounded below by ??·scal > 0. If we relax the restriction of positivity of complex sectional curvature to nonnegativity, we can also show that the manifold is compact under the additional condition of positive asymptotic volume ratio.     

Ricci Deformation of the Metric on Riemannian Orbifolds

In this note we generalize the Huisken’s (J Diff Geom 21:47–62, 1985) result to Riemannian orbifolds. We show that on any n-dimensional (n ≥ 4) orbifold of positive scalar curvature the metric can be deformed into a metric of constant positive curvature, provided the norm of the Weyl conformal curvature tensor and the norm of the traceless Ricci tensor are not large compared to the scalar curvature at each point, and therefore generalize 3-orbifolds result proved by Hamilton [Three- orbifolds with positive Ricci curvature. In: Cao HD, Chow B, Chu SC, Yau ST (eds) Collected Papers on Ricci Flow, Internat. Press, Somerville, 2003] to n-orbifolds (n ≥ 4).     

An Obstruction to Fundamental Groups of Positively Ricci Curved Manifolds

In this note we propose a conjecture concerning fundamental groups of Riemannian n-manifolds with positive Ricci curvature. We prove a partial result under an extra condition on a lower bound of sectional curvature. Our main tool is the theory of Hausdorff convergence. We also extend Fukaya and Yamaguchi's resolution of a conjecture of Gromov to limit spaces which may have singular points.     

The G-invariant spectrum and non-orbifold singularities

We consider the G-invariant spectrum of the Laplacian on an orbit space M/G where M is a compact Riemannian manifold and G acts by isometries. We generalize the Sunada–Pesce–Sutton technique to the G-invariant setting to produce pairs of isospectral non-isometric orbit spaces. One of these spaces is isometric to an orbifold with constant sectional curvature whereas the other admits non-orbifold singularities and therefore has unbounded sectional curvature. We conclude that constant sectional curvature and the presence of non-orbifold singularities are inaudible to the G-invariant spectrum.     

Topological obstructions to nonnegative curvature

We find new obstructions to the existence of complete Riemannian metric of nonnegative sectional curvature on manifolds with infinite fundamental groups. In particular, we construct many examples of vector bundles whose total spaces admit no nonnegatively curved metrics. Received February 11, 2000 / Published online February 5, 2001     

Some Results of Biharmonic Maps

In this paper, we investigate biharmonic maps from a complete Riemannian manifold into a Riemannian manifold with non-positive sectional curvature. We obtain some non-existence results for these maps.     

Properly discontinuous actions on Hilbert manifolds

In this article we study properly discontinuous actions on Hilbert manifolds giving new examples of complete Hilbert manifolds with nonnegative, respectively nonpositive, sectional curvature with infinite fundamental group. We also get examples of complete infinite dimensional Kähler manifolds with positive holomorphic sectional curvature and infinite fundamental group in contrastwith the finite dimensional case and we classify abelian groups acting linearly, isometrically and properly discontinuously on Stiefel manifolds. Finally, we classify homogeneous Hilbert manifolds with constant sectional curvature.     

Stable minimal hypersurfaces in a Riemannian manifold with pinched negative sectional curvature

We give an estimate of the smallest spectral value 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 minimal hypersurface in a Riemannian manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature to be stable.     

An Exotic {T_{1}\mathbb{S}^4} with Positive Curvature

We construct a metric with positive sectional curvature on a 7-manifold which supports an isometry group with orbits of codimension 1. It is a connection metric on the total space of an orbifold 3-sphere bundle over an orbifold 4-sphere. By a result of S. Goette, the manifold is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the unit tangent bundle of the 4-sphere.     

Some curvature properties of complex surfaces

Summary In this paper, we are investigating curvature properties of complex two-dimensional Hermitian manifolds, particularly in the compact case. To do this, we start with the remark that the fundamental form of such a manifold is integrable, and we use the analogy with the locally conformal KÄhler manifolds, which follows from this remark. Among the obtained results, we have the following: a compact Hermitian surface for which either the Riemannian curvature tensor satisfies the KÄhler symmetries or the Hermitian curvature tensor satisfies the Riemannian Bianchi identity is KÄhler; a compact Hermitian surface of constant sectional curvature is a flat KÄhler surface; a compact Hermitian surface M with nonnegative nonidentical zero holomorphie Hermitian bisectional curvature has vanishing plurigenera, c₁(M) 0, and no exceptional curves; a compact Hermitian surface with distinguished metric, and positive integral Riemannian scalar curvature has vanishing plurigenera, etc.