Positively curved 7-dimensional manifolds (Q4935769)

A complete Riemannian manifold with everywhere positive sectional curvature is said to be a positively curved manifold. In this paper, the authors study cohomogeneity one, positively curved manifolds of dimension 7, where the assumption on the cohomogeneity must be interpreted as follows. We say that a compact Lie group \(G\) acts on a compact manifold \(M\) by cohomogeneity \(k\) if the codimension of the principal orbit is equal to \(k\). Then, in the case of cohomogeneity one \((k=1)\), the orbit space \(M/G\) is homeomorphic to \({\mathbb S}^1\). The authors prove the following result: Let \(M\) be a compact, positively curved 7-dimensional Riemannian manifold. Let \(G\) be a compact Lie group acting isometrically and almost faithfully on \(M\) by cohomogeneity one. If the semisimple part of \(G\) has dimension bigger than 6, then \(M\) is diffeomorphic to a sphere \({\mathbb S}^7\). This problem was studied by \textit{W.-Y. Hsiang} and \textit{B. Kleiner} in dimension 4 [J. Differ. Geom. 29, No. 3, 615-621 (1989; Zbl 0674.53047)], and by \textit{C. Searle} in dimensions 5 and 6 [Math. Z. 214, 491-498 (1993), Corrigendum ibid. 226, No.3, 165-167 (1997; Zbl 0804.53057)].