Related papers: On a theorem of Grove and Searle

Positive curvature and bosons Compact positive curvature Riemannian manifolds M with symmetry group G allow Conner-Kobayashi reductions M to N, where N is the fixed point set of the symmetry G. The set N is a union of smaller-dimensional…

We write the Euler characteristic X(G) of a four dimensional finite simple geometric graph G=(V,E) in terms of the Euler characteristic X(G(w)) of two-dimensional geometric subgraphs G(w). The Euler curvature K(x) of a four dimensional…

In this paper we show that a simply connected 8-dimensional manifold M of positive sectional curvature and symmetry rank $\geq 2$ resembles a rank one symmetric space in several ways. For example, the Euler characteristic of M is equal to…

Manifolds admitting positive sectional curvature are conjectured to have rigid homotopical structure and, in particular, comparatively small Euler charateristics. In this article, we obtain upper bounds for the Euler characteristic of a…

We prove that the Euler characteristic of an even-dimensional compact manifold with positive (nonnegative) sectional curvature is positive (nonnegative) provided that the manifold admits an isometric action of a compact Lie group $G$ with…

In the 1930s, H. Hopf conjectured that a closed, even-dimensional manifold of positive sectional curvature has positive Euler characteristic. We show this under the additional assumption of an isometric $T^4$-action on the manifold,…

We study closed manifolds with almost nonnegative curvature operator and address a question of Herrmann--Sebastian--Tuschmann concerning the sign of their Euler characteristic. Our main result shows that if a closed $2n$-dimensional…

The Hopf sign conjecture states that a compact Riemannian 2d-manifold M of positive curvature has Euler characteristic X(M)>0 and that in the case of negative curvature X(M) (-1)^d >0. The Hopf product conjecture asks whether a positive…

This is the first part of a series of papers where we compute Euler characteristics, signatures, elliptic genera, and a number of other invariants of smooth manifolds that admit Riemannian metrics with positive sectional curvature and large…

Roughly speaking, to any space $M$ with perfect obstruction theory we associate a space $N$ with symmetric perfect obstruction theory. It is a cone over $M$ given by the dual of the obstruction sheaf of $M$, and contains $M$ as its zero…

In this note, we prove that if a compact even dimensional manifold $M^{n}$ with negative sectional curvature is homotopic to some compact space-like manifold $N^{n}$, then the Euler characteristic number of $M^{n}$ satisfies…

We study the topology of closed, simply-connected, 6-dimensional Riemannian manifolds of positive sectional curvature which admit isometric actions by $SU(2)$ or $SO(3)$. We show that their Euler characteristic agrees with that of the known…

Hopf conjectured that even-dimensional closed Riemannian manifolds with positive sectional curvature have positive Euler characteristic. The conclusion of the conjecture is known to fail if the positive sectional curvature assumption is…

We geometrically construct a homology theory that generalizes the Euler characteristic mod 2 to objects in the unoriented cobordism ring N_*(X) of a topological space X. This homology theory Eh_* has coefficients Z/2 in every nonnegative…

Let $G$ be a $(2,m,n)$-group and let $x$ be the number of distinct primes dividing $\chi$, the Euler characteristic of $G$. We prove, first, that, apart from a finite number of known exceptions, a non-abelian simple composition factor $T$…

The sphere formula states that in an arbitrary finite abstract simplicial complex, the sum of the Euler characteristic of unit spheres centered at even-dimensional simplices is equal to the sum of the Euler characteristic of unit spheres…

A 1930s conjecture of Hopf states that an even-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with positive sectional curvature has positive Euler characteristic. We prove this conjecture under the additional assumption that the isometry group has…

In this paper, by employing the Gauss-Bonnet theorem for Riemannian simplices due to Allendoerfer and Weil, we show that if a closed nonpositively curved $4$-manifold has nonzero Euler characteristic, then its simplicial volume is…

We consider closed manifolds that admit a metric locally isometric to a product of symmetric planes. For such manifolds, we prove that the Euler characteristic is an obstruction to the existence of flat structures, confirming an old…

The correlation functions of supersymmetric gauge theories on a four-manifold X can sometimes be expressed in terms of topological invariants of X. We show how the existence of superconformal fixed points in the gauge theory can provide…