Related papers: Isometries, rigidity, and universal covers

Rigidity results are obtained for Riemannian $d$-manifolds with $\sec \geqslant 1$ and spherical rank at least $d-2>0$. Conjecturally, all such manifolds are locally isometric to a round sphere or complex projective space with the…

Given a manifold (or, more generally, a developable orbifold) $M_0$ and two closed Riemannian manifolds $M_1$ and $M_2$ with a finite covering map to $M_0$, we give a spectral characterisation of when they are equivalent Riemannian covers…

We prove the following three results in Hamiltonian dynamics. 1. The Weinstein conjecture holds true for every displaceable hypersurface of contact type. 2. Every magnetic flow on a closed Riemannian manifold has contractible closed orbits…

We characterize the universal covering of connected analytic pseudo-Riemannian manifolds which admit a non-trivial and isometric action of the simple Lie group $SL(3,\mathbb{R})$ with a dense orbit preserving a finite volume. If such…

We prove a result on equivariant deformations of flat bundles, and as a corollary, we obtain two ``splitting in a finite cover'' theorems for isometric group actions on Riemannian manifolds with infinite fundamental groups, where the…

In this paper we generalize a result in [1], showing that an arbitrary Riemannian symmetric space can be realized as a closed submanifold of a covering group of the Lie group defining the symmetric space. Some properties of the subgroups of…

We formalize the ``metric bundle'' viewpoint by defining, for any smooth $n$--manifold $M$, the open fiberwise cones $\mathcal{G}^{p,q}\subset S^2\Tstar M$ of nondegenerate symmetric bilinear forms with fixed signature $(p,q)$, and we…

In this article, we consider perturbations of isometries on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$. We investigate the smooth (resp. analytic) rigidity phenomenon of groups of these isometries. As a particular case, we prove that if a finite…

Let $M$ be a finite volume analytic pseudo-Riemannian manifold that admits an isometric $G$-action with a dense orbit, where $G$ is a connected non-compact simple Lie group. For low-dimensional $M$, i.e. $\dim(M) < 2\dim(G)$, when the…

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…

In this paper, by combining techniques from Ricci flow and algebraic geometry, we prove the following generalization of the classical uniformization theorem of Riemann surfaces. Given a complete noncompact complex two dimensional K\"ahler…

Up to dimension five, we can prove that given any closed Riemannian manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature, of which the universal covering has vanishing homology group $H_k$ for all $k\geq 3$, either it is flat or it has Gauss-Bonnet…

We describe the isometry group of $L^2(\Omega, M)$ for Riemannian manifolds $M$ of dimension at least two with irreducible universal cover. We establish a rigidity result for the isometries of these spaces: any isometry arises from an…

We investigate a question of Cooper adjacent to the Virtual Haken Conjecture. Assuming certain conjectures in number theory, we show that there exist hyperbolic rational homology 3-spheres with arbitrarily large injectivity radius. These…

We prove the following rigidity theorem: For an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with boundary whose Ricci curvature is bounded by n-1 from below, if its boundary is isometric to the standard sphere of dimension n-1 and totally…

We prove that every finitely generated group with recursive aspherical presentation embeds into a group with finite aspherical presentation. This and several known facts about groups and manifolds imply that there exists a 4-dimensional…

A similarity structure on a connected manifold M is a Riemannian metric on its universal cover such that the fundamental group of M acts by similarities. If the manifold M is compact, we show that the universal cover admits a de Rham…

We provide two new proofs of a theorem of Cooper, Long and Reid which asserts that, apart from an explicit finite list of exceptional manifolds, any compact orientable irreducible 3-manifold with non-empty boundary has large fundamental…

We study transnormal and isoparametric functions on closed Riemannian 4-manifolds and establish fundamental restrictions on their topology and geometry. In particular, we show that such manifolds cannot be endowed with negatively curved…

We show that if $g$ is a Riemannian metric on a closed piecewise locally symmetric manifold $M$, then the lift of $g$ to the universal cover $\widetilde{M}$ has a discrete isometry group. We also show that the index $[\Isom(\widetilde{M}):…