Isospectral metrics on five-dimensional spheres. (Q1609828)

The author constructs non-trivial isospectral pairs of Riemannian manifolds, i.e., Riemannian manifolds having the same spectrum (including multiplicities) of their Laplacians but being non-isometric. The main result is the existence of non-trivial isospectral pairs of metrics on the five-dimensional sphere \(S^5\) and the six-dimensional ball \(B^6\) (cf.~Sec.~3.3). Furthermore, examples of continuous non-trivial isospectral families of metrics on spheres \(S^{2m+1 \geq 7}\) and on balls \(B^{2m+2 \geq 8}\) (cf.~Sec.~3.2) are given. In these examples it is possible to choose the isospectral metrics such that they equal the standard metric except on a set of arbitrary small volume (cf.~Sec.~5). These examples extend results by \textit{Carolyn S.~Gordon} [Invent. Math. 145, 317--331 (2001; Zbl 0995.58004)], where the existence of a continuous family of non-trivial isospectral metrics on \(S^{n \geq 8}\) was shown, and by \textit{Zoltàn I. Szabó} [Ann. Math. (2) 154, 437--475 (2001; Zbl 1012.53034)], where non-trivial isospectral pairs of metrics on \(S^{n \geq 10}\) have been constructed. Isospectral metrics on spheres are of particular interest since they cannot be constructed using the method of \textit{Toshikazu Sunada} [Ann. Math. (2) 121, 169--186 (1985; Zbl 0585.58047)] since spheres are simply connected. Furthermore, the method of principal torus bundles [see e.g. \textit{Carolyn Gordon}, J. Differ. Geom. 37, 639--649 (1993; Zbl 0792.53037)] cannot be applied either, since no sphere is a principal \(T^{k \geq 2}\)- bundle. The author reformulates Gordon's result on \(S^{n \geq 8}\) in a way that only quadratic forms instead of the Laplacians are involved. Furthermore, she gives a sufficient conditions for non-isometry.