On the fundamental groups of positively curved manifolds (Q1281882)

The aim of the paper is to give a negative answer to Chern's conjecture that for a compact Riemannian manifold \(M\) of positive sectional curvature each abelian subgroup of the fundamental group \(\pi_1(M)\) is cyclic. The author gives two examples of manifolds with metrics of positive sectional curvature which admit a free isometric \(SO(3)\)-action. The first is the Aloff-Wallach space \(N_{1,1} = SU(3)\times SO(3)/U^*(2)\), where \(U^*(2)\) is the image of \(U(2)\) under the embedding \((i, \pi) : U(2) \to SU(3) \times SO(3)\), \(i(A) = \left( \begin{smallmatrix} A & 0 \\ 0 & \det(A)^{-1} \end{smallmatrix}\right)\), \(\pi : U(2) \to SO(3)=U(2)/S^1\) is the projection. The group \(\{id\}\times SO(3)\) acts freely on \(N_{1,1}\). The second example is the Eschenburg space \(M_{1,1} = U_{1,1}\backslash U(3)/Z'\), where \(U_{1,1}= \text{diag}(z,z,1)\), \(Z' = \{\text{diag}(z,z, \bar z)\}\), \(z \in S^1\), and \(\text{diag}(a,b,c)\) is the matrix with diagonal entries \(a\), \(b\), \(c\). A left-invariant and \(Ad(U(2))\times U(1)\)-invariant metric on \(U(3)\) gives a metric \(g\) of positive curvature on \(M_{1,1}\) such that \((M_{1,1}, g)\) admits a free isometric \(SO(3)\) action. Since \(Z_2\oplus Z_2 \subset SO(3)\), the Riemannian manifolds \(M_{1,1}\) and \(N_{1,1}\) provide counterexamples to Chern's conjecture. At the end of the paper the author formulates the problem: ``Let \(M\) be a compact Riemannian manifold of positive curvature. Is it true that every abelian subgroup of \(\pi_1(M)\) of odd order is cyclic?''.