Einstein four-manifolds of pinched sectional curvature (Q1669036)

A fundamental problem in differential geometry is to determine whether a smooth manifold admits an Einstein metric, i.e., a Riemannian metric \(g\) satisfying \(\text{Ric}(g)=\lambda g\). In dimension four the following is a folklore conjecture: \textbf{Conjecture.} An Einstein four-manifold with \(\lambda >0\) and non-negative sectional curvature must be either \((\mathbb{S}^4, g_0)\), \((\mathbb{C}P^2, g_{FS})\), \(\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{S}^2\) or a quotient. In the present paper the authors obtain a classification of four-dimensional Einstein manifolds with positive Ricci curvature and pinched sectional curvature. Their main result is the following: \textbf{Theorem.} Let \((M, g)\) be a complete smooth four manifold with \(\text{Ric}=g\). Assume the sectional curvature satisfies one of the following conditions: (a) \(K\leq \frac{14-\sqrt{19}}{12}\sim 0.8034\). (b) At each point \(q\in M\), for every orthonormal basis \(\{e_1, e_2, e_3, e_4\}\) of \(T_qM\) which satisfies \(K(e_1, e_2)\geq K(e_1, e_3)\), \[ 2K(e_1, e_2)+K(e_1, e_3)\geq \frac{\sqrt{19}-3}4\sim 0.3397247. \] Then \((M, g)\) is isometric to either \((\mathbb{S}^4, g_0)\), \((\mathbb{R}P^4, g_0)\), or \((\mathbb{C}P^2, g_{FS})\), up to rescaling.