New connected sums with positive Ricci curvature (Q2462628)

It is very important to understand the geometry and the topology of a manifold that admits a metric of positive Ricci curvature. In contrast to the case of positive scalar curvature, this problem is still far from reach. A practical way to attack the problem seems to be finding more examples of such manifolds. In fact, several methods including bundle construction, symmetry method, and surgery theory have been developed to construct metrics of positive Ricci curvature on certain model spaces [see, e.g., \textit{W. A. Poor jun.}, Math. Ann. 216, 245--252 (1975; Zbl 0293.53016), \textit{J. C. Nash}, J. Differ. Geom. 14, 241--254 (1979; Zbl 0464.53035), \textit{D. Gromoll} and \textit{W. T. Meyer}, J. Differ. Geom. 21, 195--211 (1985; Zbl 0583.53036), \textit{J.-P. Sha} and \textit{D.-G. Yang}, J. Differ. Geom. 33, 127--137 (1991; Zbl 0728.53027), \textit{D. Wraith}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 501, 99--113 (1998; Zbl 0915.53018), \textit{K. Grove} and \textit{W. Ziller}, Invent. Math. 149, 619--646 (2002; Zbl 1038.53034) and \textit{C. P. Boyer} and \textit{K. Galicki}, Geom. Topol. 10, 2219--2235 (2006; Zbl 1129.53026) for details)]. The paper under review gives a surgery method to produce metrics of positive Ricci curvature on connected sums of products of spheres and thus adds new examples of manifolds with positive Ricci curvature to the family. In contrast to previous surgery methods [see e.g., J. P. Sha and D.-G. Yang (loc. cit.) and D. Wraith (loc. cit.)] this one allows the factor spheres to have different dimensions. The major difficulty here comes from the fact that different products of spheres display different symmetries.