A counterexample to the (unstable) Gromov-Lawson-Rosenberg conjecture

We prove the Gromov-Lawson-Rosenberg conjecture for cocompact Fuchsian groups, thereby giving necessary and sufficient conditions for a closed spin manifold of dimension greater than four with fundamental group cocompact Fuchsian to admit a metric of positive scalar curvature.

In this paper we consider a well-known construction due to Gromov and Lawson, Schoen and Yau, Gajer, and Walsh which allows for the extension of a metric of positive scalar curvature over the trace of a surgery in codimension at least $3$ to a metric of positive scalar curvature which is a product near the boundary. We generalize this construction to work for $(p,n)$-intermediate scalar curvature for $0\leq p\leq n-2$ for surgeries in codimension at least $p+3$. We then use i...

In this paper, we give both positive and negative answers to Gromov's compactness question regarding positive scalar curvature metrics on noncompact manifolds. First we construct examples that give a negative answer to Gromov's compactness question. These examples are based on the non-vanishing of certain index theoretic invariants that arise at the infinity of the given underlying manifold. This is a $ \sideset{}{^1}\varprojlim$ phenomenon and naturally leads one to conjectu...

The Lichnerowicz formula yields an index theoretic obstruction to positive scalar curvature metrics on closed spin manifolds. The most general form of this obstruction is due to Rosenberg and takes values in the $K$-theory of the group $C^*$-algebra of the fundamental group of the underlying manifold. We give an overview of recent results clarifying the relation of the Rosenberg index to notions from large scale geometry like enlargeability and essentialness. One central topi...

Witten and Yau (hep-th/9910245) have recently considered a generalisation of the AdS/CFT correspondence, and have shown that the relevant manifolds have certain physically desirable properties when the scalar curvature of the boundary is positive. It is natural to ask whether similar results hold when the scalar curvature is zero. With this motivation, we study compact scalar flat manifolds which do not accept a positive scalar curvature metric. We call these manifolds rigidl...

In this survey article, given a smooth closed manifold M we study the space of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature on M. A long-standing question is: when is this space non-empty (i.e. when does M admit a metric of positive scalar curvature)? More generally: what is the topology of this space? For example, what are its homotopy groups? Higher index theory of the Dirac operator is the basic tool to address these questions. This has seen tremendous development 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 introduce Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature on manifolds with Baas-Sullivan singularities, prove a corresponding homology invariance principle and discuss admissible products. Using this theory we construct positive scalar curvature metrics on closed smooth manifolds of dimension at least five which have odd order abelian fundamental groups, are nonspin and atoral. This solves the Gromov-Lawson-Rosenberg conjecture for a new class of manifolds with finite fun...

we show that the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on a manifold is, when nonempty, homotopy equivalent to a space of metrics of positive scalar curvature that restrict to a fixed metric near a given submanifold of codimension greater or equal than 3. Our main tool is a parameterized version of the Gromov-Lawson construction, which was used to show that the existence of a metric of positive scalar curvature on a manifold was invariant under surgeries in codimensio...

In this short note we show how the higher index theory can be used to prove results concerning the non-existence of complete riemannian metric with uniformly positive scalar curvature at infinity. By improving some classical results due to M. Gromov and B. Lawson we show the efficiency of these methods in dealing with such non-existence theorems.