Scalar curvature and the multiconformal class of a direct product Riemannian manifold

Autoren: Nobuhiko Otoba, Saskia Roos (2018)

For a closed, connected direct product Riemannian manifold (M,g)=(M1×⋯×Ml,g1⊕⋯⊕gl), we define its multiconformal class [[g]] as the totality {f12g1⊕⋯⊕fl2gl} of all Riemannian metrics obtained from multiplying the metric gi of each factor Mi by a function fi2>0 on the total space M. A multiconformal class [[g]] contains not only all warped product type deformations of g but also the whole conformal class [g~] of every g~∈[[g]]. In this article, we prove that [[g]] carries a metric of positive scalar curvature if and only if the conformal class of some factor (Mi,gi) does, under the technical assumption dimMi≥2. We also show that, even in the case where every factor (Mi,gi) has positive scalar curvature, [[g]] carries a metric of scalar curvature constantly equal to −1 and with arbitrarily large volume, provided l≥2 and dimM≥3. In this case, such negative scalar curvature metrics within [[g]] for l=2 cannot be of any warped product type.


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