Biquotients with singly generated rational cohomology (Q1826908)

A closed manifold is called a biquotient if it is diffeomorphic to \(K\setminus G/H\) for some compact Lie group \(G\) together with two closed subgroups \(H\) and \(K\) such that \(K\) acts freely on \(G/H\). The interest in these manifolds comes from the fact that they have a Riemannian metric of nonnegative sectional curvature and that they are almost all known examples of this situation. In the paper, the authors classify the compact simply connected biquotients whose rational cohomology ring is generated by one element. Except possibly two cases, the classification is achieved up to diffeomorphisms. Recall now the example of \textit{D. Gromoll} and \textit{W. Meyer} of an exotic 7-sphere with a nonnegative sectional curvature [Ann. Math. (2) 100, No. 3, 401--406 (1974; Zbl 0293.53015)]. As a consequence of their classification, the authors prove that the only biquotient which can be an exotic sphere is diffeomorphic to the Gromoll-Meyer's example. This last result is also obtained by \textit{B. Totaro} in [J. Differ. Geom. 61, 397--451 (2002;Zbl 1071.53529)] where he analyzes which of Cheeger manifolds are diffeomorphic to biquotients.