Total curvatures of geodesic spheres associated to quadratic curvature invariants (Q2505597)

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the study of the following problem: To what extent do the properties of sufficiently small geodesic spheres determine the Riemannian geometry of the ambient space? The volume conjecture of \textit{A. Gray} and \textit{L. Vanhecke} [Acta Math. 142, 157--198 (1979; Zbl 0428.53017)] states that two-point homogeneous spaces should be characterized by the volumes of their small geodesic sphere among Riemannian manifolds with a holonomy group adapted to the considered model space. \textit{B.-Y. Chen} and \textit{L. Vanhecke} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 325, 28--67 (1981; Zbl 0503.53013)] formulated analogous conjectures for the total scalar curvature and \(L^2\)-norm of the second fundamental form of geodesic spheres, and solved the characterization problem completely by combining any two of the three functions above. Let \(\tilde R\), \(\tilde \rho\) and \(\tilde \tau\) be the curvature tensor, the Ricci tensor and the scalar curvature of a small geodesic sphere. In the present paper, the authors continue the previous studies by considering the quadratic curvature invariants \(\|\tilde R\|^2,\;\left\|\tilde \rho\right\|^2, \;\tilde\tau^2\) and investigating the corresponding \(L^2\)-norm on geodesic spheres. They compute the first terms in the power-series expansion of the integrals of these curvature invariants, then characterize the model spaces by considering the same total quadratic curvature invariants. One of their theorems is the following: Let \(M\) be a Riemannian manifold with \(\dim M = n\geq 3\), \(n\neq 5\), and holonomy group adapted to a model space and suppose that, for all \(m\in M\), the \(L^2\)-norm of the curvature tensor of sufficiently small geodesic spheres is the same as those in the model space. Then \(M\) is locally isometric to that model space. For the \(L^2\)-norm of the Ricci tensor the authors obtain similar results, but only for low dimensions: \(3\leq n \leq 10, \;n \neq 5\). Analogously, if \(M\) is Einsteinian, with \(\dim M = n\neq 5\), the \(L^2\)-norm of the Ricci tensor or the \(L^2\)-norm of the scalar curvature of sufficiently small geodesic spheres suffice to characterize the model spaces.