Homotopy invariants and almost non-negative curvature (Q2069617)

This article features various results concerning rational homotopy theoretic invariants in the context of almost non-negatively sectionally curved manifolds. A closed smooth manifold is said to be \textit{almost non-negatively sectionally curved} if for every \(\epsilon > 0\) it carries a Riemannian metric \(g_\epsilon\) satisfying \(\mathrm{sec}_{g_\epsilon} \cdot \mathrm{diam}_{g_\epsilon}^2 > -\epsilon\), where \(\sec\) denotes the global minimum of sectional curvatures over tangent two-planes, and \(\mathrm{diam}\) denotes the diameter. This notion was introduced by Gromov in the late 1970's and studied further by Fukaya and Takao Yamaguchi, and others; see [\textit{K. Fukaya} and \textit{T. Yamaguchi}, Ann. Math. (2) 136, No. 2, 253--333 (1992; Zbl 0770.53028)]. The starting point of the investigation in the current article is a pair of theorems of [\textit{V. Kapovitch}, \textit{A. Petrunin}, and \textit{W. Tuschmann}, Ann. Math. (2) 171, No. 1, 343--373 (2010; Zbl 1192.53040)], stating that \begin{itemize} \item[1.] A closed almost non-negatively sectionally curved manifold \(M\) is nilpotent up to finite cover; that is, there is a closed manifold \(\hat{M}\), finitely covering \(M\), whose natural fundamental group action on all homotopy groups of \(\hat{M}\) is nilpotent (in particular, the fundamental group is nilpotent). \item[2.] A closed almost non-negatively sectionally curved manifold is finitely covered by a manifold \(\bar{M}\) that fibers over a nilmanifold with simply connected fiber (which furthermore satisfies a certain generalized ``almost non-negatively curved'' condition). \end{itemize} The first order of business is to show that both points above can be achieved simultaneously; the authors then refer to fiber bundles \(F \to \bar{M} \to N\), where \(F\) is a closed simply connected manifold, \(\bar{M}\) is nilpotent, and \(N\) is a nilmanifold, as fiber bundles of \textit{ANSC-type}. In particular, some finite cover of a closed almost non-negatively sectionally curved (ANSC) manifold is the total space of a fiber bundle of ANSC-type. The authors invoke some delicate classical results to show that ANSC-type fiber bundles can be immediately treated with usual rational homotopy theoretic arguments, i.e. they can be modelled as described in [\textit{D. Sullivan}, Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 47, 269--331 (1977; Zbl 0374.57002)]. A special class of examples of ANSC manifolds one can keep in mind are the cohomogeneity one manifolds, i.e. those with a compact Lie group action all of whose principal orbits are of codimension one. As a quick corollary of the setup, the authors use a result of [\textit{J. Roitberg}, Invent. Math. 39, 91--94 (1977; Zbl 0334.55015) ] (one in the long and still-active study of the multiplicativity of signature in fiber bundles going back at least to Atiyah, Chern, Hirzebruch, Serre in the 1950's) to show that a closed ANSC manifold with infinite fundamental group (to exclude the possibility of \(N\) being trivial) has vanishing signature. Most of the results in the sequel are in terms of the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category \(\mathrm{cat}\), defined for a space \(X\) as the smallest \(k\) for which there exist \(k+1\) open sets covering \(X\) whose inclusions into \(X\) are nullhomotopic, and the Toomer invariant \(\mathrm{e}_0(X)\), defined as the smallest \(k\) for which the projection of a minimal model of \(X\) onto the vector space spanned by words of length \(\leq k\) is cohomologically injective. In Proposition 4.1, it is proved that the Toomer invariant of the total space of an ANSC-type fiber bundle is greater than the sum of the Toomer invariants of the base and fiber; in fact the result is obtained in somewhat greater generality. A useful fact here is that the Toomer invariant of a nilmanifold coincides with its dimension (Corollary 3.12). In Theorem 4.2, the authors then prove that the Toomer invariant of the universal cover of a closed ANSC manifold \(M\) is bounded from above by \(\mathrm{cat}(M) - \mathrm{dim}(N)\), where \(N\) is the nilmanifold showing up as the base in any associated ANSC-type fiber bundle \(F \to \bar{M} \to N\) where \(\bar{M}\) is a finite cover of \(M\). As a corollary, it is proved that a closed ANSC manifold with first Betti number equal to its Lusternik--Schnirelmann category is homeomorphic to a torus. If one also knew that the manifold were a nilmanifold, then by Mostow rigidity the homeomorphism could be upgraded to a diffeomorphism. This is a topological analogue of part of Takao Yamaguchi's ``pinching theorem'' [\textit{T. Yamaguchi}, Ann. Math. (2) 133, No. 2, 317--357 (1991; Zbl 0737.53041)] which states that there exist constants \(\epsilon_n\) such that if \(\mathrm{sec}_g \cdot \mathrm{diam}_g^2 > - \epsilon_n\) for some closed Riemannian \(n\)-manifold \((M,g)\) with \(b_1(M) = n\), then \(M\) is diffeomorphic to a torus. Making use of the Cheeger-Gromoll splitting theorem, it is shown in Theorem 4.10 that a closed manifold \(M\) carrying a metric of non-negative Ricci curvature satisfies \(\mathrm{cat}(M) \geq b_1(M) + \mathrm{e}_0(\tilde{M})\), where \(\tilde{M}\) is the universal cover of \(M\). As an example demonstrating the utility of the results up to and including Section 4, the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of the total space of the pullback of the twistor bundle \(S^2 \to \mathbb{CP}^3 \to S^4\) along any non-zero degree map from the Kodaira-Thurston manifold to \(S^4\) is computed to be five. In Section 5, some results and examples are discussed surrounding a conjecture of Tuschmann that the fundamental group of an ANSC manifold has a finite-index subgroup acting trivially on the second homotopy group, and the famous conjecture attributed to Bott that closed (nilpotent) manifolds carrying a metric \(g\) with \(\sec_g \geq 0\) have finite-dimensional total rational homotopy \(\sum \pi_* \otimes \mathbb{Q}\).