No label defined (Q4532248)

From the authors introduction: ``Let \((M,g)\) be a Riemannian manifold and let \((T_r M,\tilde g)\), denote the tangent sphere bundle of radius \(r > 0 \) equipped with the induced Sasaki metric. The first two authors have proved in [Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 18, 207-219 (2000; Zbl 1011.53025)], Theorem 4, that if \((M,g)\) is a locally symmetric space with positive sectional curvature, then \((T_r M,\tilde g)\) is a space of non-negative sectional curvature for all sufficiently small \(r > 0\).'' Their main result is that the conclusion in the above mentioned theorem is the best possible for dim 3, i.e. Theorem. Let \((T_r M,\tilde g)\) be a tangent sphere bundle over a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) of dimension \(n \geq 3\), \(n\neq 8\). Then \((T_r M,\tilde g)\) is never a space of positive sectional curvature. This beautiful article starts with a short review of tangent sphere bundles and contains a bibliography containing references to other papers in this trend. In the third section, they prove the following general result on the curvature operator of a Riemannian manifold: Proposition. Let \((M,g)\), \(n=\dim M\), be a Riemannian manifold such that \(n \geq 3, n\neq 4,8\). Then, at every point \(x \in M\), there are unit vectors \(X,Y\) and \(Z\) in the tangent space \(M_x\) such that \(\langle X,Y\rangle = 0\) and \(R_x(X,Y)Z = 0.\) For the entire collection see [Zbl 0980.00033].