Ricci curvature in the neighborhood of rank-one symmetric spaces. (Q1608507)

In his previous paper [J. Math. Pure. Appl. (9) 78, 389--430 (1999; Zbl 0970.53014)], the first author showed that every field of bilinear forms, close enough to the appropriate multiple of the standard metric, may be seen as the Ricci curvature of a close metric (in a weighted functional spaces topology) with the same structure at infinity as the model space. In the present paper these results are put in a general setting and some global aspects of the Ricci curvature of a Riemannian manifold, seen as a differential operator acting on the space of all metrics on the manifold and especially in a neighborhood of the standard metric of a rank-one noncompact symmetric space, are studied by using the techniques recently developed by \textit{O. Biquard} [Métriques d'Einstein asymptotiquement symmétriques, Astérisque, 265, Soc. Math. France (2000; Zbl 0967.53030)]. More precisely, the Ricci curvature can be prescribed in a neighborhood of the standard metric of any of the spaces \(R\mathbb{H}^n\) \((n\geq 10)\), \(c\mathbb{H}^n\) \((m\geq 5)\), \(H\mathbb{H}^p\) \((p\geq 2)\) and the Cayley hyperbolic plane \(O\mathbb{H}^2\) in topologies given by the weighted functional spaces. So, any symmetric bilinear field close enough to the standard may be realized as the Ricci curvature of a close metric if its decay rate at infinity (its weight) belongs to some precisely known interval. The case if the decay rate is too small or too large is studied.