A differentiable sphere theorem with positive Ricci curvature and reverse volume pinching (Q547373)

Milnor's exotic spheres showed that for a manifold being homeomorphic to a sphere \(S^n\) does not imply it is also diffeomorphic to \(S^n\). The \(\frac{1}{4}\)-pinched sphere theorem showed, however, that, if the sectional curvature is in \((\frac{1}{4},1]\), then the manifold is diffeomorphic to \(S^n\). Here, the authors reach the same conclusion under three assumptions: (1) the sectional curvature is at most 1; (2) the Ricci curvature is at least \(\frac{n+2}{4}\); (3) the volume of the manifold is not larger than \((1+\eta)\) times the volume of \(S^n\) for some positive constant \(\eta\) depending on \(n\). The first two conditions imply that the injectivity radius is at least \(\pi\). They use this to get an upper bound on the diameter of a sequence of manifolds, and then show that their third, volume condition is violated in the limit, thus establishing their result by contradiction.