Sasakian geometry, homotopy spheres and positive Ricci curvature. (Q1401000)

The purpose of this interesting paper is to investigate the Sasakian geometry of homotopy spheres with the goal of producing Sasakian metrics with positive Ricci curvature on exotic spheres. For \(n\geq 3\) let \(\Sigma^{2n-1}\) be a homotopy sphere that can be realized as the boundary of a parallelizable manifold. Then, the authors prove that \(\Sigma^{2n-1}\) admits Sasakian metrics of positive Ricci curvature. Furthermore, they show that on such homotopy spheres the moduli space of Sasakian structures has infinitely many positive components determined by inequivalent underlying contact structures. The authors also prove the existence of Sasakian metrics of positive Ricci curvature on each of the known \(2^{2m}\) diffeomorphism types of homotopy real projective spaces \(\mathbb RP^{4m+1}\).