The Witten Laplacian on negatively curved simply connected manifolds (Q1321757): Difference between revisions

The Hopf conjecture stated that \((-1)^ n\chi(M)>0\) for the Euler characteristic of a compact Riemannian \(2n\)-manifold \(M\) of negative sectional curvature. The Singer's approach using the \(L^ 2\)-index theorem depends on the vanishing of \(L^ 2\)-harmonic forms. Using the Witten Laplacian \(\square_ \tau=d_ \tau d^*_ \tau+d^*_ \tau d_ \tau\) where \(d_ \tau=e^{\tau h}de^{-\tau h}\) is a modification of the exterior derivative \(d\), the author derives certain estimates of the infimum of the spectrum on \(L^ 2\Omega^ q\) (the space of \(q\)- forms) in terms of eigenvalues of the Hessian \(\nabla^ 2h\). If in particular \(h=h(x)\) is the distance function from a fixed point, if moreover \(\pi_ 1(M)=0\), \(\text{Sect}_ M\leq k^ 2<0\), and \(R^ q\) is bounded from below (where \(R^ q\) is the curvature term in the Weitzenbock formula \(\triangle=\nabla^*\nabla+R^ q\)), then there exists \(\tau\geq 0\) such that any harmonic form \(\varphi\) with \(e^{\tau h}\varphi\in L^ 2\) vanishes identically. The result indicates the difficulty of the Hopf conjecture since such forms \(\varphi\) cannot be induced from embeddings of hyperbolic \(n\)-spaces thought of as a unit ball into some \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\).