Rank 1 aspherical manifolds which do not support any nonpositively curved metric (Q1903138)

The authors address the question of the existence of smooth Riemannian metrics of nonpositive sectional curvature on compact manifolds. They construct examples of compact topological manifolds \(M\) supporting at least two distinct smooth structures, one of which carries a metric of nonpositive curvature whereas the other does not. It follows that the existence of such a metric is not determined by the homotopy type of \(M\).