Related papers: Einstein Metrics, Four-Manifolds, and Differential…

We show that there exist smooth, simply connected, four-dimensional spin manifolds which do not admit Einstein metrics, but nonetheless satisfy the strict Hitchin-Thorpe inequality. Our construction makes use of the Bauer/Furuta cohomotopy…

Seiberg-Witten theory is used to obtain new obstructions to the existence of Einstein metrics on 4-manifolds with conical singularities along an embedded surface. In the present article, the cone angle is required to be of the form 2(pi)/p,…

The existence or non-existence of Einstein metrics on 4-manifolds with non-trivial fundamental group and the relation with the underlying differential structure are analyzed. For most points $(n,m)$ in a large region of the integer lattice,…

We find a new obstruction for a real Einstein 4-orbifold with an A1-singularity to be a limit of smooth Einstein 4-manifolds. The obstruction is a curvature condition at the singular point. For asymptotically hyperbolic metrics, with…

Seiberg-Witten theory leads to a delicate interplay between Riemannian geometry and smooth topology in dimension four. In particular, the scalar curvature of any metric must satisfy certain non-trivial estimates if the manifold in question…

It is shown that there are infinitely many compact orientable smooth 4-manifolds which do not admit Einstein metrics, but nevertheless satisfy the strict Hitchin-Thorpe inequality 2 chi > 3 |tau|. The examples in question arise as…

The Einstein-Maxwell equations on a smooth compact 4-manifold are reformulated as a purely Riemannian variational problem analogous to Calabi's variational problem for extremal Kahler metrics. Next, Seiberg-Witten theory is used to show…

We show that solutions of the Seiberg-Witten equations lead to non-trivial lower bounds for the L2-norm of the Weyl curvature of a compact Riemannian 4-manifold. These estimates are then used to derive new obstructions to the existence of…

We derive new, sharp lower bounds for certain curvature functionals on the space of Riemannian metrics of a smooth compact 4-manifold with a non-trivial Seiberg-Witten invariant. These allow one, for example, to exactly compute the infimum…

We study Einstein metrics on smooth compact 4-manifolds with an edge-cone singularity of specified cone angle along an embedded 2-manifold. To do so, we first derive modified versions of the Gauss-Bonnet and signature theorems for arbitrary…

We prove that for every natural number k there are simply connected topological four-manifolds which have at leat k distinct smooth structures supporting Einstein metrics, and also have infinitely many distinct smooth structures not…

We survey the definitions and some important properties of several asymptotic invariants of smooth manifolds, and discuss some open questions related to them. We prove that the (non-)vanishing of the minimal volume is a differentiable…

We prove that there are infinitely many pairs of homeomorphic non-diffeomorphic smooth 4-manifolds, such that in each pair one manifold admits an Einstein metric and the other does not. We also show that there are closed 4-manifolds with…

By using the gluing formulae of the Seiberg-Witten invariant, we show the nonexistence of Einstein metric on manifolds obtained from a 4-manifold with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariant by performing sufficiently many connected sums or…

Building on previous results, we complete the classification of compact oriented Einstein 4-manifolds with det (W^+) > 0. There are, up to diffeomorphism, exactly 15 manifolds that carry such metrics, and, on each of these manifolds, such…

We survey some aspects of the current state of research on Einstein metrics on compact 4-manifolds. A number of open problems are presented and discussed.

We present a global conformal invariant on closed six-manifolds which obstructs the existence of a conformally Einstein metric. We show that this obstruction is nontrivial and, up to multiplication by a constant, is the unique such…

We demonstrate an obstruction to finding certain splittings of four-manifolds along sufficiently twisted circle bundles over Riemann surfaces, arising from Seiberg-Witten theory. These obstructions are used to show a non-splitting result…

Using the new diffeomorphism invariants of Seiberg and Witten, a uniqueness theorem is proved for Einstein metrics on compact quotients of irreducible 4-dimensional symmetric spaces of non-compact type. The proof also yields a Riemannian…

We consider invariant Einstein metrics on the Stiefel manifold $V_q\bb{R} ^n$ of all orthonormal $q$-frames in $\bb{R}^n$. This manifold is diffeomorphic to the homogeneous space $\SO(n)/\SO(n-q)$ and its isotropy representation contains…