Harmonic manifolds with some specific volume densities (Q1386774)

Let \((M,g)\) be an \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold and \((x_1,\dots, x_n)\) a system of normal coordinates centered at \(m\). Denote by \(\theta_m= (\text{det } g_{ij})^{1/2}\) the volume density function of \(\exp_m\). Then \((M,g)\) is said to be harmonic if for each \(m\), \(\theta_m\) only depends on the distance \(d(m,p)\) for \(p\) sufficiently close to \(m\). Any manifold which is locally isometric to a two-point homogeneous space is harmonic and a long-standing conjecture was that these were the only examples. Z. I. Szabó proved this conjecture for compact manifolds with finite fundamental group, but the discovery of Damek-Ricci spaces provided noncompact counterexamples [see \textit{J. Berndt, F. Tricerri} and \textit{L. Vanhecke}, `Generalized Heisenberg groups and Damek-Ricci harmonic spaces' (Lect. Notes Math. 1598, Springer-Verlag, Berlin) (1995; Zbl 0818.53067) for more details and further references]. For real, complex and quaternionic space forms, \(\theta_m\) has well-known explicit expressions. It can be proved by using power series expansions, linear and quadratic scalar curvature invariants, that when \((M,g)\) is a Riemannian, respectively a Kähler or a quaternionic Kähler manifold, these expressions characterize locally these space forms [see, for example, \textit{A. Gray} and \textit{L. Vanhecke}, Acta Math. 142, 157-198 (1979; Zbl 0428.53017); \textit{B.-Y. Chen} and \textit{L. Vanhecke}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 325, 28-67 (1981; Zbl 0503.53013)]. In this paper, the authors suppose that \((M,g)\) is in addition complete and non-compact and provide alternative proofs for the mentioned results. These proofs are completely different, are of a global nature and use Jacobi field techniques. Their method is also used to give a new proof of the already known result that a complete Ricci-flat harmonic space is isometric to Euclidean space. Some further rigidity problems are treated, too.