\(L^2\) harmonic forms on submanifolds in a Hadamard manifold (Q495236)

The author obtains some interesting results concerning the space \(H^p(L^2(M))\) of all \(L^2\) harmonic \(p\)-forms on a complete submanifold \(M^n\) of a Riemannian manifold \((N^{n+m},<\cdot,\cdot>)\). In the first part of the paper, he proves the following theorem which generalizes Cao-Shen-Zhu's result [\textit{H.-D. Cao} et al., Math. Res. Lett. 4, No. 5, 637--644 (1997; Zbl 0906.53004)] on stable minimal hypersurfaces to the \(\frac{n-1}{n}\)-super-stable minimal submanifolds with higher codimension. Theorem 1. Let \(M^n\), \(n\geq 3\), be an \(\frac{n-1}{n}\)-super-stable complete minimal submanifold immersed in \(\mathbb R^{n+m}\). Then \(H^1(L^2(M))=\{0\}\), and \(M\) has only one end. In the second part of the paper, the author deals with complete minimal submanifolds in Hadamard manifolds, i.e., complete simply connected Riemannian manifolds with non-positive sectional curvature. We recall that a Riemannian manifold \((N^{n+m},<\cdot,\cdot>)\) is said to have pure curvature tensor if for every \(x\in N\) there is an orthonormal basis \(\{e_i\}_{i=\overline{1,n+m}}\) of \(T_xN\) such that \(<\bar{R}(e_i,e_j)e_k\), \(e_l>=0\) whenever the set \(\{i,j,k,l\}\) contains more than two elements, where \(\bar{R}\) denotes the Riemann curvature tensor of the Levi-Civita connection \(\bar{\nabla}\) of the metric \(<\cdot,\cdot>\). On the other hand, the \((p,n-p)\)-curvature of \(N^{n+m}\) is defined for \(1\leq p\leq n-1\) by \[ \bar{R}^{(p,n-p)}([e_{i_1},\dots,e_{i_n}])=\sum_{t=1}^{p}\sum_{h=p+1}^{n}\bar{R}_{i_ti_hi_ti_h}, \] where the indices \(1\leq i_1,\dots,i_n\leq n+m\) are distinct from each other. The main result in the second part of the paper is the following. Theorem 2. Let \(M^n\), \(n\geq 3\), be a complete non-compact immersed submanifold in a Hadamard manifold \(N^{n+m}\). Assume that the \((p,n-p)\)-curvature of \(N^{n+m}\) is not less than \(-k\) for \(1\leq p\leq n-1\). When \(2\leq p\leq n-2\), assume further that \(M\) has flat normal bundle and \(N^{n+m}\) has pure curvature tensor. Denote by \(\Delta\) the Hodge Laplace-Beltrami operator of \(M\) acting on the space of differential \(p\)-forms and \(\phi\) is the traceless second fundamental form of \(M\) in \(N\). {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] If the index of the operator \(\Delta+k+\frac{1}{2}(n-1)| \phi|^2\) is zero, then \(H^p(L^2(M))=\{0\}\), for all \(1\leq p\leq n-1\). \item [(ii)] If \(\Delta+k+\frac{1}{2}(n-1)| \phi|^2\) has finite index, then for any \(1\leq p\leq n-1\), \(H^p(L^2(M))\) has finite dimension. \end{itemize}}