Strongly positive curvature (Q1749427)

In a previous work by other authors, it was proved using the Ricci flow, that manifolds with positive definite curvature operator also admit a metric with constant curvature and hence they are a quotient of a sphere. On the other hand, manifolds with positive sectional curvature (a weaker condition) are much less understood. In the present paper, the strongly positive curvature condition (an intermediate one) is investigated and applied to homogeneous examples. It is proved that, for a Riemannian submersion \(\pi:\bar M\rightarrow M\), if \(\bar M\) has strongly positive curvature, then \(M\) also has strongly positive curvature. For sectional curvature, an analogous statement holds, however, for positive definite curvature operator it does not. The strongly positive curvature is in general not preserved by the Ricci flow. However, it is proved in the paper that it is preserved under Cheeger deformations. Using these tools, the complete classification of closed simply connected homogeneous spaces admitting an invariant metric with strongly positive curvature is obtained.