Spaces of nonnegatively curved surfaces (Q1651447)

Let \(M\) be a connected manifold of positive dimension, let \(0 \leq \gamma \leq \infty\), and let \(\mathcal{R}^\gamma(M)\) denote the space of all complete, smooth Riemannian metrics on \(M\) endowed with the \(C^\gamma\) topology. Theorem 1.1 states that \(\mathcal{R}^\infty(M)\) is homeomorphic to \(\ell^2\) (the separable Hilbert space), while \(\mathcal{R}^\gamma(M)\) is homeomorphic to \(\Sigma^\omega\) (the product of countably many copies of the standard Hilbert cube \(\Sigma\) in \(\ell^2\)) for every finite \(\gamma\). The proof of this theorem relies on the convexity of \(\mathcal{R}^\gamma(M)\) in the space of all smooth, symmetric \(2\)-tensors on \(M\) in the \(C^\gamma\) topology. The main results of the paper concern the spaces \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq 0}^\gamma(M)\) of smooth, complete, nonnegatively curved metrics on the surfaces \(S^2\), \(\mathbb{R}P^2\), and \(\mathbb{C}^2\) -- or, more generally, the spaces \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq \lambda}^\gamma(M)\) with sectional curvature greater than or equal to \(\lambda\). With the curvature restriction, these spaces are generally not convex in \(\mathcal{R}^\gamma(M)\), and so the methods used to prove Theorem 1.1 cannot be applied directly. Instead, the authors construct a homeomorphic parametrization of \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq \lambda}^\gamma(M)\) by a space to which techniques of infinite-dimensional topology may be applied. Using this approach, the authors prove in Theorems 1.2 and 1.3 that: (1) If \(M\) is \(S^2\) or \(\mathbb{R}P^2\), then for every real \(\lambda\), \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq \lambda}^\infty(M)\) is homeomorphic to \(\ell^2\) and \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq \lambda}^\gamma(M)\) is homeomorphic to \(\Sigma^\omega\) if \(\gamma\) is finite and not an integer. (2) \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq 0}^\infty(\mathbb{C})\) is homeomorphic to \(\ell^2\) and \(\mathcal{R}_{\geq 0}^\gamma(\mathbb{C})\) is homeomorphic to \(\Sigma^\omega\) if \(\gamma\) is finite and not an integer.