Related papers: Isometries, rigidity, and universal covers

In this paper we prove that every Riemannian metric on a locally conformally flat manifold with umbilic boundary can be conformally deformed to a scalar flat metric having constant mean curvature. This result can be seen as a generalization…

Based on the work of Adams and Stuck as well as on the work of Zeghib, we classify the Lie groups which can act isometrically and locally effectively on Lorentzian manifolds of finite volume. In the case that the corresponding Lie algebra…

We generalize the concept of sub-Riemannian geometry to infinite-dimensional manifolds modeled on convenient vector spaces. On a sub-Riemannian manifold $M$, the metric is defined only on a sub-bundle $\calH$ of the tangent bundle $TM$,…

A symplectic form is called hyperbolic if its pull-back to the universal cover is a differential of a bounded one-form. The present paper is concerned with the properties and constructions of manifolds admitting hyperbolic symplectic forms.…

We study curvature invariants of a sub-Riemannian manifold (i.e., a manifold with a Riemannian metric on a non-holonomic distribution) related to mutual curvature of several pairwise orthogonal subspaces of the distribution, and prove…

We prove that compact complex manifolds bearing a holomorphic Riemannian metric have infinite fundamental group.

This paper grew out of an attempt to find a suitable finite sheeted covering of an aspherical 3-manifold so that the cover either has infinite or trivial first homology group. With this motivation we define a new class of groups. These…

We use the reflection group trick to glue manifolds with corners that are Borel-Serre compactifications of locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type and obtain aspherical manifolds. We call these \emph{piecewise locally symmetric}…

We define the class of high dimensional graph manifolds. These are compact smooth manifolds supporting a decomposition into finitely many pieces, each of which is diffeomorphic to the product of a torus with a finite volume hyperbolic…

We formulate a conjecture relating the topology of a manifold's universal cover with the existence of metrics with positive $m$-intermediate curvature. We prove the result for manifolds of dimension $n\in\{3,4,5\}$ and for most choices of…

In this note we present various extensions of Obata's rigidity theorem concerning the Hessian of a function on a Riemannian manifold. They include general rigidity theorems for the generalized Obata equation, and hyperbolic and Euclidean…

This is a continuation of an earlier preprint (math.GT/0209121) under the same title. These papers grew out of an attempt to find a suitable finite sheeted covering of an aspherical 3-manifold so that the cover either has infinite or…

We present the proof of the HRR theorem for a generic complex compact manifold by evaluating the functional integral for the Witten index of the appropriate supersymmetric quantum mechanical system.

Let $\mathcal K$ be a complete quasivariety of completely regular universal topological algebras of continuous signature $\mathcal E$ (which means that $\mathcal K$ is closed under taking subalgebras, Cartesian products, and includes all…

Let $X, Y$ be complete, simply connected Riemannian surfaces with pinched negative curvature $-b^2 \leq K \leq -1$. We show that if $f : \partial X \to \partial Y$ is a Moebius homeomorphism between the boundaries at infinity of $X, Y$,…

The Lichnerowicz conjecture asserts that all harmonic manifolds are either flat or locally symmetric spaces of rank 1. This conjecture has been proved by Z.I. Szabo for harmonic manifolds with compact universal cover. E. Damek and F. Ricci…

In this paper, we study some basic geometric properties of pseudohermitian submanifolds of the Heisenberg groups. In particular, we obtain the uniqueness and existence theorems, and some rigidity theorems.

In \cite{BAMU}, an ergodic theorem \`a la Birkhoff-von Neumann for the action of the fundamental group of a compact negatively curved manifold on the boundary of its universal cover is proved. A quick corollary is the irreducibility of the…

Simply-connected manifolds of positive sectional curvature $M$ are speculated to have a rigid topological structure. In particular, they are conjectured to be rationally elliptic, i.e., all but finitely many homotopy groups are conjectured…

We establish new results and introduce new methods in the theory of measurable orbit equivalence, using bounded cohomology of group representations. Our rigidity statements hold for a wide (uncountable) class of groups arising from negative…