Integral curvature and topological obstructions for submanifolds (Q376281)

The author provides integral curvature bounds for compact Riemannian manifolds that allow isometric immersions into an Euclidean space with low codimension in terms of the Betti numbers. In [J. Geom. Anal. 7, No. 3, 377--386 (1997; Zbl 0960.53022)], \textit{K. Shiohama} and \textit{H. Xu} proposed the following problem: If \((M^n, g)\) is a compact \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold which can be isometrically immersed into \({\mathbb R}^{2n-1}\) such that the \(L^{n/2}\)-norm of \(R - \frac{S}{n(n-1)}R_1\) is sufficiently small, then \(M\) is homeomorphic to the sphere \(S^n\). Here \(R\) and \(S\) denote respectively the curvature tensor and the scalar curvature, and \(R_1 = -\frac{1}{2} g\bullet g\), where \(\bullet\) is the Kulkarni-Nomizu product. The author affirmatively answers this problem in low codimension \(\geq 2\). He proves that, given \(n \geq 4\), \(k \in\mathbb R\) and \(\lambda>0\), there exists \(\epsilon = \epsilon(n, k, \lambda) >0\) such that if \((M^n, g)\) is a compact Riemannian \(n\)-manifold that admits an isometric immersion in \(\mathbb R^{n+p}\), \(2 \leq p \leq n/2\), so that the scalar curvature and the second fundamental form \(A\) satisfy \(| S|\geq\lambda\| A\|^2\), then \[ \int_M \| R-kR_1\|^{n/2} \, dv_g \geq \epsilon I, \] where \(I = \sum_{i=p}^{n-p} \beta_i\) if \(k >0\) and \(I=\sum_{i=0}^p \beta_i\) if \(k \leq 0\), and \(\beta_i\) is the \(i\)th Betti number of \(M^n\). Furthermore, the author shows that if \(k >0\) and \[ \int_M \| R - k R_1\|^{n/2} \, dv_g<\epsilon, \] then \(M^n\) has the homotopy type of a CW-complex with no cells of dimension \(i\) for \(p\leq i\leq n-p\), and if \(k \leq 0\) and \[ \int_M \| R - k R_1\|^{n/2} \, dv_g < 3\epsilon, \] then \(M^n\) is homeomorphic to the sphere \(S^n\). The author also shows that the same property holds when replacing \(k R_1\) by \(R - \frac{S}{n(n-1)}R_1\) if the scalar curvature \(S\) is non-positive.