Non-negatively curved 6-manifolds with almost maximal symmetry rank (Q1725908)

The class of closed (Riemannian) manifolds of non-negative (sectional) curvature is far from being completely understood. In order to correct this situation, the presence of isometric Lie group actions has been very useful to obtain structural results. Recall that the rank of a manifold is defined to be the rank of its isometry group. \par Closed manifolds of non-negative curvature are conjectured to have rank at most the integer part of $2n/3$, where $n$ is the dimension of the manifold. Previous works have shown that the conjecture holds if $n\leq 12$, and there exist classifications of non-negatively curved manifolds of maximal rank in dimensions $\leq 9$. Moreover, those with almost maximal rank have been classified up to dimension $5$. \par The main theorem in the article under review is a classification of closed, simply connected, non-negatively curved $6$-manifolds with an isometric effective $T^3$-action, i.e., of almost maximal rank. Such a manifold must be diffeomorphic to $S^3\times S^3$ or equivariantly diffeomorphic to a torus manifold with a linear torus action. The latter class is known and consists of $S^6$, $\mathbb{C} P^3$ and quotients of $S^3\times S^4$, $S^3\times S^5$ and $S^3\times S^3\times S^3$ by a free linear action of $S^1$, $T^2$ and $T^3$ respectively. \par The authors use previous results on the topological classification of closed simply connected $6$-manifolds and on the structure of non-negatively curved manifolds with isometric actions, and develop topological results on manifolds that decompose as disk bundles. With this material at hand they analyze thoroughly the manifolds of interest and obtain the desired classification.