Smooth manifolds with infinite fundamental group admitting no real projective structure (Q2666399)

A classical question in geometry is whether a given smooth manifold admits a geometric structure locally modeled on some homogeneous space. This paper considers the case of real projective structures, i.e. geometric structures locally modeled on \( \mathbb{RP}^n \) and its group of projective transformations \( \operatorname{PSL}(n+1,\mathbb R) \). The interest in this case is motivated by the fact that \( \mathbb{RP}^n \) contains classical geometries as subgeometries (e.g. Euclidean, hyperbolic, spherical). For instance, it is well known that all closed surfaces and most geometric 3-manifolds admit a real projective structure. On the other hand, a closed simply connected manifold with a real projective structure must be a sphere, so one can find simply connected manifolds that do not admit real projective structures, such as \( \mathbb{CP}^n \). Therefore, the interest is in constructing manifolds with no real projective structure and infinite fundamental group. The main result in this paper is the construction in every dimension \( n \geq 4 \) of some closed smooth manifolds with no real projective structure and fundamental group the infinite dihedral group \( \mathbb Z / 2 \mathbb Z \ast \mathbb Z / 2 \mathbb Z \). This generalizes work by Cooper and Goldman, who gave the first example of a closed manifold with no real projective structure in dimension 3, i.e. the connected sum of two copies of \( \mathbb{RP}^3 \) [\textit{D. Cooper} and \textit{W. Goldman}, Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse, Math. (6) 24, No. 5, 1219--1238 (2015; Zbl 1362.57030)]. The manifolds in the main theorem are constructed as certain twisted products of \( S^1 \) with a manifold \( W \) having fundamental group \( \mathbb Z / 2 \mathbb Z \). Following Cooper and Goldman, the author argues that if one of these manifolds \(M\) had a real projective structure, then the double cover \( N = \widetilde W \times S^1 \) would have a real projective structure with holonomy contained in a one-parameter subgroup of \( \operatorname{PSL}(n+1,\mathbb R) \), corresponding to the \( S^1 \) factor. A careful analysis of the associated flow and of the induced map between the leaf spaces on \(N\) and \( \mathbb{RP}^n \) shows that this is impossible. The author also constructed examples with fundamental group \( \mathbb Z\) in [\textit{H. Çoban}, Topology Appl. 265, Article ID 106828, 3 p. (2019; Zbl 1422.57058)].