Minimal entropy and collapsing with curvature bounded from below (Q1401474)

Let \(M^{n}\) be a closed orientable connected smooth manifold. Given a Riemannian metric \(g\), let \(\phi _{t}\) be the geodesic flow of \(g\). The simplest dynamical invariant that one can associate to \(\phi _{t}\) to roughly measure its orbit structure complexity is the topological entropy, which we denote by \(h_{\text{top}}(g)\), and that can be defined as follows: given two points \(p\) and \(q\) in \(M\) and \(T>0\), define \(n_{T}(p,q)\) to be the number of geodesic arcs joining \(p\) and \(q\) with length \(\leq T\). Then \[ h_{\text{top}}(g)= \lim_{T\rightarrow \infty }\frac{1}{T}\log \int_{M\times M}n_{T}(p,q) \,dp\,dq. \] One of the main goals in this paper is the study of the variational theory of the functional \(g\rightarrow h_{\text{top}}(g)\). In general this functional is only upper semicontinuous in the \(C^{\infty}\) topology and it has a simple behaviour under scaling of the metric: if \(c\) is any positive constant, then \(h_{\text{top}}(cg)= \frac{h_{\text{top}}(g)}{\sqrt{c}}\), hence if one wants to extract interesting extremal metrics from this functional a normalization is required. The Riemannian invariant that is used for this normalization is the volume Vol\((M,g)\). Let us consider the minimal entropy of \(M\) to be \( h(M):= \inf \{ h_{\text{top}}(g)\mid g\) is a smooth metric on \(M\) with Vol\((M,g)=1\}\). A smooth metric \(g_{0}\) with Vol\((M,g_{0})=1\) is entropy minimizing if \(h_{\text{top}}(g_{0})= h(M)\). The minimal entropy problem for \(M\) is whether or not there exists an entropy minimizing metric on \(M\). There are a number of classes of manifolds for which the minimal entropy problem can be solved. In fact, a positive solution to the minimal entropy problem appears to single out manifolds that have either a high degree of symmetry or a low topological complexity. There is a close relationship between minimal entropy, minimal volume and simplicial volume. Simplicial volume is a homotopy invariant, the minimal volume depends on the smooth structure of \(M\), but one does not know if the same holds for minimal entropy. Since computing of these invariants is in general difficult, \textit{J. Cheeger} and \textit{M. Gromov} in [J. Differ. Geom. 23, 309--346 (1986; Zbl 0606.53028)] and \textit{M. Gromov} in [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 56, 5--99 (1982; Zbl 0516.53046)], introduced the concept of the \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure on \(M\). An \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure on a smooth closed manifold is given by an action on \(M\) of a sheaf \(\mathcal{S}\) of tori with a finite cover of \(M\) by saturated open subsets \(\{U_{1},\dots,U_{N}\}\), such that: a) On each \(U_{i}\), there is a constant subsheaf \(\mathcal{S}_{i}\) of \( \mathcal{S}\) and a finite normal covering \(\pi _{i}:\widetilde{U}_{i}\rightarrow U_{i}\) such that the structure homomorphisms of \(\pi _{i}^{\ast }(\mathcal{S}_{i})\) give isomorphisms between the global sections and the stalks; b) The local action of the sections defines a smooth, effective torus action \(T^{k_{i}}\times \widetilde{U}_{i}\rightarrow \widetilde{U}_{i}\); c) The stalk of the sheaf at any point \(x\in M\) is spanned by the stalks of the subsheaves corresponding to the \(U_{i}\)'s which contain \(x\) and non-empty intersections of the \(U_{i}\)'s also have a finite covering such that the pull back of the sheaf spanned by the corresponding \(\mathcal{S}_{i}\)'s gives rise to a global torus action as before. The structure partitions \(M\) into disjoint orbits which are flat manifolds amenable to collapse. When the dimension of the orbits is, in a certain precise sense, locally constant, the structure is said to be polarized. Cheeger and Gromoll proved that if \(M\) admits a polarized \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure then the minimal volume of \(M\) vanishes which implies that all the characteristic numbers of the manifold are zero. They also proved that if the \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure has positive rank (all its orbits have positive dimension), then the Euler characteristic of \(M\) must be zero. In this article the authors prove that: 1. If the closed manifold \(M\) admits an \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure, then the minimal entropy is zero, and as a corollary if the closed manifold \(M\) admits an \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure, then the simplicial volume is zero. 2. If the closed manifold \(M\) admits an \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure then it collapses with curvature bounded from below. This means there exists a sequence of metrics \(g_{j}\) for which the sectional curvature is uniformly bounded from below, but their volumes approach zero as \(j\) goes to infinity. 3. Every simply connected closed smooth 5-manifold admits a \(\mathcal{T}\)-structure \(M\) (an \(\mathcal{F}\)-structure is called a \(\mathcal{T}\)-structure if all the coverings \(\pi _{i}:\widetilde{U}_{i}\rightarrow U_{i}\) are trivial). Moreover suppose that either a) \(M\) is a spin; b) \(M\) is a nontrivial \(S^{3}\)-bundle over \(S^{2}\) or the Wu-manifold \(SU(3)/SO(3)\); c) \(M\) is a connected sum of manifolds of types a) or b), then \(M\) admits a polarized \(\mathcal{T}\)-structure. 4. Let \(M\) be a closed manifold obtained by taking connected sums of copies of \(S^{4}\), \(\mathbb{C}P^{2}\), \(\overline{\mathbb{C}P^{2}}\), \(S^{2}\times S^{2}\) and the \(K3\) surface. Then \(h(M)=0\) and the minimal entropy problem can be solved for \(M\) if and only if \(\;M\) is diffeomorphic to \(S^{4}\), \(\mathbb{C}P^{2}\), \(S^{2}\times S^{2}\), \(\mathbb{C}P^{2}\)\# \(\overline{\mathbb{C}P^{2}}\) or \(\mathbb{C}P^{2}\)\# \(\mathbb{C}P^{2}\).