Rigidity for odd-dimensional souls (Q441108)

The author proves a new rigidity result for an open manifold M with nonnegative sectional curvature whose soul \(\Sigma \subset M\) is odd-dimensional. Specifically, there exist a geodesic in \(\Sigma \) and a parallel vertical plane field along it with constant vertical curvature and vanishing normal curvature. Under the additional assumption that the Sharafutdinov fibers are rotationally symmetric, this implies that for small \(r\), the distance sphere \(B_r(\Sigma ) = \{p \in M\mid \text{dist}(p,\Sigma ) = r\}\) contains an immersed flat cylinder, and thus could not have positive curvature.