Remarks on a conjecture of Gromov and Lawson

In this short note we survey some results about the fundamental group of a compact negatively curved manifold. In particular, we review a theorem of Gusevskij, it states that the fundamental group of a compact negatively curved manifold does not belong to $\mathcal{C},$ where $\mathcal{C}$ is the smallest class of groups that contains all amenable groups and is closed under free products and finite extensions.

Under mild assumptions on a group G, we prove that the class of complete Riemannian n-manifolds of uniformly bounded negative sectional curvatures and with the fundamental groups isomorphic to G breaks into finitely many tangential homotopy types. It follows that many aspherical manifolds do not admit complete negatively curved metrics with prescribed curvature bounds.

The fundamental group of a Riemannian manifold with $\delta$-pinched negative curvature, $\delta >1/4$, cannot be the fundamental group of a quasicompact K\"ahler manifold. The proof also implies that a non-uniform lattice in $F_{4(-20)}$ cannot be the fundamental group of a quasicompact K\"ahler manifold. We also construct examples in the spirit of Gromov-Thurston to show that our result is a non-trivial extension of the previously known result that a non-uniform lattice in ...

We study the question of existence of a Riemannian metric of positive scalar curvature metric on manifolds with the Sullivan-Baas singularities. The manifolds we consider are Spin and simply connected. We prove an analogue of the Gromov-Lawson Conjecture for such manifolds in the case of particular type of singularities. We give an affirmative answer when such manifolds with singularities accept a metric of positive scalar curvature in terms of the index of the Dirac operator...

We classify the triples $H \subset K \subset G$ of nested compact Lie groups which satisfy the "positive triple" condition that was shown by the second author to ensure that $G/H$ admits a metric with quasi-positive curvature. A few new examples of spaces that admit quasi-positively curved metrics emerge from this classification; namely, a $\CP^2$-bundle over $S^6$, a $B^7$-bundle over $\HP^2$, a $\CP^{2n-1}$-bundle over $\HP^{n}$ for each $n\geq 2$, and a family of finite qu...

For every $n\geq 4$ we construct infinitely many mutually not homotopic closed manifolds of dimension $n$ which admit a negatively curved Einstein metric but no locally symmetric metric.

Let $M$ be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ has non-trivial higher homotopy groups. Moreover, denote by $\mathcal{M}_0^+(M)$ the moduli space of positive scalar cuvature metrics on $M$ associated to the group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of $M$. We show that if $M$ belongs to a certain class of manifold...

We show that in every dimension $n \geq 8$, there exists a smooth closed manifold $M^n$ which does not admit a smooth positive scalar curvature ("psc") metric, but $M$ admits an $\mathrm{L}^\infty$-metric which is smooth and has psc outside a singular set of codimension $\geq 8$. This provides counterexamples to a conjecture of Schoen. In fact, there are such examples of arbitrarily high dimension with only single point singularities. In addition, we provide examples of $\mat...

We give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible 2-tori sufficiently complicated to force branching of geodesics for nonpositively curved metrics.

When undergraduates ask me what geometric group theorists study, I describe a theorem due to Gromov which relates the groups with an intrinsic geometry like that of the hyperbolic plane to those in which certain computations can be efficiently carried out. In short, I describe the close but surprising connection between negative curvature and efficient computation. This theorem was one of the clearest early indications that applying a metric perspective to traditional group t...