No label defined (Q4340765)

Originating from the classical sphere theorem developed during the first half of this century by Morse, Schoenberg, Myers, Synge, Rauch, Berger and Alexandrov-Toponogov, the author describes the paths of newer developments, and in doing so, he reveals the abundance of open problems noteworthy to pursue. First, Gromoll-Grove-Shiohamas' diameter sphere theorem presents rather obvious questions: are there any exotic spheres \(M\) with sec \(M\geq 1\) and \(\text{diam} M \geq\pi/2\)? Are there any new manifolds \(M\) with sec \(M\geq 1\) and \(\text{diam} M \geq\pi/2 -\varepsilon\)? Secondly, a development from outside deals with the question of classifying all \(n\)-dimensional Alexandrov spaces \(X\) with \(\text{curv} X\geq 1\) and \(\text{diam} X=\pi/2\), and recently G. Perelman gave its bridge to the case of Riemannian manifolds \(M\) by presenting the theorem: any \(n\)-dimensional Alexandrov space \(X\) with \(\text{curv} X\geq 1\) and \(\text{rad} X> \pi/2\) is homeomorphic to \(S^n\). This idea from outside has led \textit{K. Grove} and \textit{F. Wilhelm} [Ann. Math., II. Ser. 142, 213-237 (1995; Zbl 0846.53042)] to prove the following Theorem: if \(M\) is a closed Riemannian \(n\)-manifold with \(\text{sec} M\geq 1\) and \(\text{pack}K_{n+1} M> \pi/4\), then \(M\) is diffeomorphic to \(S^n\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0859.00016].