English

Isoparametric functions on exotic spheres

Differential Geometry 2014-12-30 v2 Geometric Topology

Abstract

This paper extends widely the work in \cite{GT13}. Existence and non-existence results of isoparametric functions on exotic spheres and Eells-Kuiper projective planes are established. In particular, every homotopy nn-sphere (n>4n>4) carries an isoparametric function (with certain metric) with 2 points as the focal set, in strong contrast to the classification of cohomogeneity one actions on homotopy spheres \cite{St96} ( only exotic Kervaire spheres admit cohomogeneity one actions besides the standard spheres ). As an application, we improve a beautiful result of B\'{e}rard-Bergery \cite{BB77} ( see also pp.234-235 of \cite{Be78} ).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.6028,
  title  = {Isoparametric functions on exotic spheres},
  author = {Chao Qian and Zizhou Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.6028},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

18 pages. References are updated, and some typos are corrected due to the referees. To appear in Adv. Math

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:47:28.943Z