The first eigenvalue of the Dirac operator on locally reducible Riemannian manifolds (Q864247)

Let \(M\) be a compact \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian spin manifold with scalar curvature \(s>0\). Then the square of the first eigenvalue \(\lambda\) of the Dirac operator satisfies \(\lambda^{2}\geq \frac{n}{n-1}\cdot \frac{\min s}{4}\) [see \textit{T. Friedrich}, Math. Nachr. 97, 117--146 (1980; Zbl 0462.53027)], the equality being characterized by the existence of a non-trivial real Killing spinor on \(M\), that is equivalent to the existence of a parallel spinor on the cone over \(M\) [see \textit{C. Bär}, Commun. Math. Phys. 154, No. 3, 509--521 (1993; Zbl 0778.53037)]. The above estimate cannot be sharp, for example, on Kähler or quaternionic Kähler manifolds. In these cases better estimates have been proved by \textit{K.-D. Kirchberg} [Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 4, 291--325 (1986; Zbl 0629.53058); J. Geom. Phys. 7, 447--468 (1990)] and \textit{W. Kramer, U. Semmelmann} and \textit{G. Weingart} [Math. Z. 230, No. 4, 727--751 (1999; Zbl 0926.53018)]. Another situation in which Friedrich's inequality is not sharp was considered by the author, \textit{G. Grantcharov} and \textit{S. Ivanov} [J. Geom. Phys. 28, No. 3--4, 263--270 (1998; Zbl 0934.58026)]. They showed that if \(M\) admits a non-trivial parallel \(1\)-form [in this case \(M\) is locally a product of a \(1\)-dimensional and an \((n-1)\)-dimensional manifold], then \(\lambda^{2}\geq \frac{n-1}{n-2}\cdot \frac{\min s}{4}\) (\(\ast\)), and the universal cover of a manifold, on which the first eigenvalue is the smallest possible, is a Riemannian product \(\mathbb{R}\times N\), where \(N\) is a simply connected manifold with a real Killing spinor. Recently, \textit{E. C. Kim} [Lower bounds of the Dirac eigenvalues on Riemannian product manifolds, arXiv:math.DG/0402427] considered the more general situation where the manifold is locally a product of Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary dimensions \(n_{1}\) and \(n_{2}\), proving a generalization of \((\ast)\) namely \(\lambda^{2}\geq \frac{n_{2}}{n_{2}-1}\cdot \frac{\min s}{4}\) (\(\ast \ast\)), gave examples of manifolds on which the equality in (\(\ast \ast\)) is attained, and stated the question of whether these examples give the general form of the universal covering of the manifolds on which the case of equality in (\(\ast \ast\)) occurs. The author shows that the answer to this question is positive. More precisely, let \(TM=T_{1}\oplus \ldots \oplus T_{k}\), where \(T_{j}\) are parallel distributions of dimension \(n_{j}\), \(j=1,\ldots ,k\), and \(n_{1}\leq \ldots \leq n_{k}\). Then \(\lambda^{2}\geq \frac{n_{k}}{n_{k}-1}\cdot \frac{\min s}{4}\) and if the equality is attained, then the universal cover of \(M\) is isometric to a product \(M_{1} \times \ldots \times M_{k}\), where \(\dim M_{j}=n_{j}\), \(M_{k}\) has a real Killing spinor and for \(j<k\), \(M_{j}\) has a parallel spinor if \(n_{j}<n_{k}\) or either a parallel spinor or a real Killing spinor if \(n_{j}=n_{k}\). For the proof a certain suitable twistor operator is introduced and a Weitzenböck formula including this operator and the Dirac operator is established.