Handlebodies and p-convexity (Q1113101)

An oriented hypersurface in a Riemannian manifold is said to be p-convex if the sum of the smallest p-principal curvatures is positive everywhere. 1-convexity is therefore the usual notion of convexity and (n-1)-convex means that the mean curvature is positive. The main result in the paper proves that one can attach a k-handle for \(k\leq p-1\) to a p-convex hypersurface in a Riemannian manifold preserving p-convexity. From this the author deduces by using a result of M. Gromov that a compact manifold with nonempty boundary admitting a handlebody decomposition with handles of dimension \(\leq p-1\) admits a metric of positive sectional curvature such that the boundary is p-convex. If in addition the manifold is parallelizable it is shown that the metric can be chosen to be of constant curvature.