Yamabe invariants and \(\text{spin}^c\) structures (Q1277077)

The Yamabe invariant of a smooth compact manifold is the supremum of the scalar curvatures of unit-volume Yamabe metrics on the manifold. In dimension 2 this invariant is a multiple of the Euler characteristic. It was also computed for all irreducible 3-manifolds with infinite \(\pi_1\). For an explicit class of 4-manifolds, the authors show that the Yamabe invariant is positive but strictly less than that of the 4-sphere. The proof is based on an evaluation of the lowest eigenvalue of a perturbation of the Yamabe Laplacian obtained using \(\text{spin}^c\) Dirac operators.