Manifolds of positive scalar curvature and conformal cobordism theory (Q1865619)

The main result of the paper is the following: Let \(W\) be a smooth compact manifold of \(\text{dim} W\geq 3\) with nonempty boundary, \(\partial W=M\), and let \(h\) be a given positive scalar curvature (PSC for brevity) metric on \(M\). Assume that there exists a Riemannian metric \(g\) on \(W\) such that its restriction on \(M\) lies in the conformal class \(C\) of \(h\) and for every metric \(g'\) on \(W\) from the conformal class of \(g\) the normalized integral scalar curvature is bounded below by a positive constant, \(Y(W,M;C)>0\). Then the metric \(h\) can be extended to a PSC-metric \(\overline g\) on \(W\) that is a product metric near the boundary. The authors derive various applications of this result which basically show that cobordism and concordance classes of PSC-metrics do not change if one appropriately replaces the metrics by their conformal classes.