Vanishing theorems on Riemannian manifolds, and geometric applications (Q2583798)

The aim of the paper is to present a unified approach to treat different geometrical questions such as the study of the constancy of harmonic maps, the topology of submanifolds and the \(L^2\)-cohomology. A Liouville-type result is proved, and used to infer a vanishing theorem which has numerous applications, as further described. First, a result of \textit{D. Fischer-Colbrie} and \textit{R. Schoen} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 33, 199--211 (1980; Zbl 0439.53060)] on the non-existence of complete metrics conformally related to the hyperbolic metric on the disk is extended to the case of stable hypersurfaces of Euclidean space. Then the case of harmonic maps with finite energy is considered, and the topology at infinity of submanifolds of Cartan-Hadamard spaces is studied. In the last part a result of \textit{J.-P. Bourguignon} [Invent. Math. 63, 263--286 (1981; Zbl 0456.53033)] on the triviality of the cohomology in the middle dimension, valid in the compact case, to the case of the \(L^2\) reduced cohomology of a complete manifold is extended .