Related papers: Spherical rank rigidity and Blaschke manifolds

We show that a closed simply connected 8-manifold (9-manifold) of positive sectional curvature on which a 3-torus (4-torus) acts isometrically is homeomorphic to a sphere, a complex projective space or a quaternionic projective plane…

Let $(M,g_M,\mathcal F)$ be a closed, connected Riemannian manifold with a Riemannian foliation $\mathcal F$ of nonzero constant transversal scalar curvature. When $M$ admits a transversal nonisometric conformal field, we find some…

Using elementary comparison geometry, we prove: Let $(M,g)$ be a simply-connected complete Riemannian manifold of dimension $\ge 3$. Suppose that the sectional curvature $K$ satisfies $ -1-s(r) \le K \le -1$, where $r$ denotes distance to a…

All spherically symmetric Riemannian metrics of constant scalar curvature in any dimension can be written down in a simple form using areal coordinates. All spherical metrics are conformally flat, so we search for the conformally flat…

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…

For a compact smooth manifold $M$ (with boundary) we prove that the topological rank of the diffeomorphism group Diff$_0^k(M)$ is finite for all $k\geq 1$. This extends a result from [2] where the same claim is proved in the special case of…

We prove that a locally compact space with an upper curvature bound is a topological manifold if and only if all of its spaces of directions are homotopy equivalent and not contractible. We discuss applications to homology manifolds, limits…

Ballmann's Rank Rigidity Conjecture predicts that a CAT(0) space of higher rank with a geometric group action is rigid -- isometric to a Riemannian symmetric space, a Euclidean building, or splits as a direct product. We confirm this…

Let $(M^n,g)$, $n \ge 4$, be a compact simply-connected Riemannian manifold with nonnegative isotropic curvature. Given $0<l\le L$, we prove that there exists $\eps = \eps (l,L,n)$ satisfying the following: If the scalar curvature $s$ of…

In this note we relate the geometric notion of fill radius with the fundamental group of the manifold. We prove: ''Suppose that a closed Riemannian manifold M satisfies the property that its universal cover has bounded fill radius. Then the…

We define \emph{piecewise rank 1} manifolds, which are aspherical manifolds that generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric,…

We prove the following result: Let $(M,g_0)$ be a complete noncompact manifold of dimension $n\geq 12$ with isotropic curvature bounded below by a positive constant, with scalar curvature bounded above, and with injectivity radius bounded…

A Riemannian manifold is called Osserman (conformally Osserman, respectively), if the eigenvalues of the Jacobi operator of its curvature tensor (Weyl tensor, respectively) are constant on the unit tangent sphere at every point. Osserman…

Consider the Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^3$ endowed with a canonical semi-symmetric non-metric connection determined by a vector field $\mathsf{C}\in\mathfrak{X}(\mathbb{R}^3)$. We study surfaces when the sectional curvature with respect to…

Let X be quasi-isometric to either the mapping class group equipped with the word metric, or to Teichmuller space equipped with either the Teichmuller metric or the Weil-Petersson metric. We introduce a unified approach to study the coarse…

We prove that if a compact, simply connected Riemannian $G$-manifold $M$ has orbit space $M/G$ isometric to some other quotient $N/H$ with $N$ having zero topological entropy, then $M$ is rationally elliptic. This result, which generalizes…

We study the rigidity of compact submanifolds of Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary codimension that satisfy a sharp pinching condition involving the norm of the second fundamental form and the mean curvature. Without assuming that the…

Let $\mathcal{M}_{0}^n$ be the class of closed, simply-connected, non-negatively curved Riemannian manifolds admitting an isometric, effective, isotropy-maximal torus action. We prove that if $M\in \mathcal{M}_{0}^n$, then $M$ is…

We consider simply connected Riemannian manifolds without conjugate points for which the horospherical mean curvature function is continuous, reversible and invariant under the geodesic flow. We show under mild additional curvature tensor…

We give a positive answer to the Chavel's conjecture [J. Diff. Geom. 4 (1970), 13-20]: a simply connected rank one normal homogeneous space is symmetric if any pair of conjugate points are isotropic. It implies that all simply connected…