A note on rigidity of the almost Ricci soliton (Q2376310)

A Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g)\) is called an almost Ricci soliton if there exist a complete vector field \(X\) and a smooth real function \(\lambda\) such that \[ \mathrm{Ric}(g)+\frac{1}{2}\mathcal{L}_Xg=\lambda g. \] If the vector field \(X\) is the gradient of a smooth function \(f\) then the Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g)\) is a gradient almost Ricci soliton. Almost Ricci solitons are generalizations of Ricci solitons; in fact, if \(\lambda\) is a constant function then \((M^n,g)\) is a Ricci soliton. On a Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g)\), a \((0,2)\) tensor \(T\) is called Codazzi if and only if for any two vector fields \(X, Y\) on \(M^n\) we have \((\nabla_XT)Y=(\nabla_YT)X\). In the paper under review, the authors show that any non-trivial almost Ricci soliton such that its Ricci tensor is Codazzi has constant sectional curvature. In the compact case, they prove that the manifold is isometric to a sphere \(S^n\). They also show that for a non-trivial gradient almost Ricci soliton with constant scalar curvature if the function \(\lambda+\frac{R}{n(n-1)}f\) attains a maximum in \(M^n\) then \((M^n,g)\) is Einstein.