Positive sectional curvature on 3-Sasakian manifolds (Q1424733)

There are relatively few manifolds of positive sectional curvature beyond spheres. In this paper, the author constructs new examples of manifolds with positive sectional curvature. The author shows that if \(S\to {\mathcal O}\) is the canonical 3-foliation of a 3-Sasakian manifold \(S\) and the associated quaternionic Kähler orbifold \({\mathcal O}\) has positive sectional curvature, then \(S\) has a canonical variation metric of positive sectional curvature for sufficiently small \(t\). Also, it is shown that if \(S(p_ 1,p_ 2,p_ 3)\) is the 3-Sasakian manifold obtained by 3-Sasakian reduction of \(S^{11}\) by the isometric circle action defined by \(z\circ (q_ 1,q_ 2,q_ 3) \equiv (z^{p_ 1}q_ 1, z^{p_ 2}q_ 2,z^{p_ 3}q_ 3)\), and if \({\mathcal O}(p_ 1,p_ 2,p_ 3)\) is the associated quaternionic Kähler orbifold of leaves of the 3-foliation, where \(p_ i\) are coprime and positive, then the condition \(\sqrt 2 \min\{p_ i\}>\max\{p_ i\}\) is sufficient to ensure positive curvature on \({\mathcal O}(p_ 1,p_ 2,p_ 3)\). Moreover, \(S(p_ 1,p_ 2,p_ 3)\) has a canonical variation metric with positive sectional curvature for such \(p_ 1,p_ 2,p_ 3\).