The \(\sigma_2\) Yamabe problem on conic spheres. II: Boundary compactness of the moduli (Q2057570)

In this article the authors consider singular metrics \(g\) on the 4-sphere that are solutions to the Yamabe problem \(\sigma_{2}(A_{g}) = \mathrm{constant}\). All singularities are isolated and conic. Let \(\{g_{\ell} \}\) be a sequence of these singular metrics on \(S^{4}\) that satisfy a certain boundedness condition on the orders of the conic singularities and the positions of these singularities. The authors prove that there is a subsequence that converges in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense to a metric \(g_{\infty}\) that either is a smooth metric of constant sectional curvature or a singular metric with two conic singularities having the same cone order. Let \(M\) be a compact, smooth manifold of dimension \(n \geq 3\) with a smooth Riemannian metric \(g\). Consider the Schouten tensor \(A_{g} = \frac{1}{n-2}~(\mathrm{Ric} - \frac{1}{2(n-1)}~R_{g})\), where Ric denotes the Ricci tensor of \(g\) and \(R_{g}\) denotes the scalar curvature of \(g\). For a positive integer \(k\) let \(\sigma_{k}(A_{g})\) denote the \(k\)th elementary symmetric function of the eigenvalues of \(A_{g}\). The \(\sigma_{k}\)-Yamabe problem is to find a metric \(g'\) conformally equivalent to g such that \(\sigma_{k}(A{g'})\) is a constant function. One may also consider the singular \(\sigma_{k}\)-Yamabe problem where the metric \(g\) is smooth on \(M\) except at a finite number of points. The authors consider the case that all singularities are \textit{conic}. Let \(g_{0}\) be a smooth background metric on \(M\). A metric \(g_{1}\) is said to have a conic singularity of order \(\beta\) at a point \(p\) of \(M\) if for points \(x\) in a neighborhood of \(p\) we can write \(g_{1} = e^{2v} d(x,p)^{2 \beta} g_{0}\), where \(v\) is a locally bounded function and \(d(x,p)\) denotes the Riemannian distance between \(x\) and \(p\) relative to \(g_{0}\). For a positive integer \(q\) consider the formal sum \(D = \sum_{i=1}^{q} \beta_{i}~p_{i}\), where \(\{p_{1}, \dots, p_{q} \}\) is a subset of \(M\) and \(-1 < \beta_{i} < 0\) for \(1 \leq i \leq q\). A singular Riemannian metric \(g_{D}\) fits the data \(D\) if \(g_{D}\) is smooth on \(M - \{p_{1}, \dots , p_{q} \}\) and has a conic singularity of order \(\beta_{i}\) at \(p_{i}\) for \(1 \leq i \leq q\). Note that if one singular metric \(g_{D}\) satisfies \(D\), then any singular metric \(g'\) conformally equivalent to \(g_{D}\) satisfies \(D\). For the \(\sigma_{k}\)-Yamabe problem one requires in addition that \(\sigma_{k}(A_{g'})\) be constant on \(M - \{p_{1}, \dots , p_{q} \}\). The authors are interested in the \(\sigma_{k}\)-Yamabe problem in the case that \(n = \dim M = 2k\), and in the present article they study the case that \(k = 2\) and \(M = S^{4}\). This is a continuation of an earlier joint work from [the authors, Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 58, No. 4, Paper No. 119, 19 p. (2019; Zbl 1421.53040)]. Given a singularity set \(D = \sum_{i=1}^{q} \beta_{i}~p_{i}\) and a smooth base metric \(g_{0}\) on \(S^{4}\) define \hspace{.2in} \(\tilde{\beta}_{j} = (\sum_{i \neq j}~\beta_{i}^{3})^{1/3}\) \hspace{.2in} for \(1 \leq j \leq q\) \hspace{.2in} \(A_{j}= \frac{3}{8}~\beta_{j}^{2} (\beta_{j} + 2)^{2}\) \hspace{.2in} for \(1 \leq j \leq q\) \hspace{.2in} \(B_{j} = \frac{3}{8}~(\tilde{\beta}_{j})^{2} (\tilde{\beta_{j}} + 2)^{2} + (\tilde{\beta}_{j} + \frac{3}{2}) (\sum_{i \neq j}~\beta_{i}^{2} - (\tilde{\beta}_{j})^{2})\) \hspace{.2in} for \(1 \leq j \leq q\). The triple \((S^{4}, D, g_{0})\) is said to be \hspace{.2in} \(\mathit{subcritical}\) \hspace{.35in} if \(A_{j} < B_{j}\) \hspace{.2in} for all j with \(1 \leq j \leq q\). \hspace{.2in} \(\mathit{critical}\) \hspace{.55in} if \(A_{j} = B_{j}\) \hspace{.2in} for some j with \(1 \leq j \leq q\) \hspace{.2in} \(\mathit{supercritical}\) \hspace{.2in} if \(A_{j} > B_{j}\) \hspace{.2in} for some j with \(1 \leq j \leq q\). In an earlier work M. Troyanov used a similar tripartite approach to study the singular Yamabe problem for conic singularity sets \(D = \sum_{i=1}^{q} \beta_{i}~p_{i}\) on \(S^{2}\). In their 2019 paper [loc. cit.] the authors considered the critical and supercritical cases of the \(\sigma_{2}\)-Yamabe problem for the triple \((S^{4}, D, g_{0})\), where \(g_{0}\) is the smooth round metric on \(S^{4}\). Moreover, they considered only metrics g for which \(\sigma_{k}(A_{g}) > 0\) for \(k=1,2\). Under these assumptions they showed that there is no solution to the \(\sigma_{2}\)-Yamabe problem in the supercritical case. In the critical case the only solution to the \(\sigma_{2}\)-Yamabe problem is a ``football'', that is there are only two singularities \(\{p_{1} , p_{2} \}\) with equal cone orders \(\beta_{1} = \beta_{2}\). The main result of this paper is the following \(\mathbf{Theorem}\). Let \(\mathfrak{M}^{2}(S^{4})\) be the set of Riemannian metrics on \(S^{4}\) that are smooth except on a finite set \(P = \{p_{1}, ... , p_{q} \}\) and satisfy \(\sigma_{2}(A_{g}) = constant\) on \(S^{4} - P\). Let \(\{g_{\ell} \}\) be a sequence in \(\mathfrak{M}^{2}(S^{4})\) of subcritical metric solutions to the \(\sigma_{2}\)-Yamabe problem with singularity data sets \(D_{\ell} = \sum_{i=1}^{q}~\beta_{\ell,i}~p_{\ell, i}\) that converge in an appropriate sense to a singular data set \(D = \sum_{i=1}^{q}~\beta_{i}~p_{i}\) as \(\ell \rightarrow \infty\), where \(-1 < \beta_{i} < 0\) for \(1 \leq i \leq 0\). Suppose furthermore that there exist a positive number \(\epsilon\) and a positive integer \(j\) with \(1 \leq j \leq q\) such that \(\tilde{\beta}_{\ell , j} = (\sum_{i \neq j}~\beta_{\ell , i}^{3})^{1/3} > -1 + \epsilon\) for all \(\ell\) and \(A_{\ell , j} - B_{\ell , j} \rightarrow 0\) as \(\ell \rightarrow \infty\). Then \(g_{\ell}\) has a subsequence that converges in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense to a metric \(g_{\infty}\) that is either a round sphere metric or a singular football metric.