The Alekseevskii conjecture in low dimensions (Q514349)

The Alekseevskii conjecture claims that any connected homogeneous Einstein space of negative scalar curvature is diffeomorphic to a Euclidean space. In this article the cases of homogeneous spaces up to dimension 10 are considered. The main results are the following: Let \((M^6, g)\) be a 6-dimensional connected homogeneous Einstein space of negative scalar curvature, on which neither \(\mathrm{SL}_2( \mathbb C)\) nor \(\widetilde{\mathrm{SL}_2( \mathbb R)} \times \widetilde{\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb R)}\) acts transitively by isometries. Then \(M^6\) is diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb R^6\). By the way, the question of whether the 6-dimensional simple Lie groups \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb C)\) and \(\widetilde{\mathrm{SL}_2( \mathbb R)} \times \widetilde{\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb R)}\) admit a left-invariant Einstein metric, is still open. Any 7-dimensional connected homogeneous Einstein space of negative scalar curvature is diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb R^7\). Let \((M^8, g)\) be an 8-dimensional connected homogeneous Einstein space of negative scalar curvature, which is de Rham irreducible. It is supposed that \(g\) is not an invariant metric on the simply connected homogeneous spaces of some of three 8-dimensional semisimple Lie groups. Then \(M^8\) is diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb R^8\). It is remarked that in these three results actually it is proved some more than it is stated -- actually the corresponding spaces admit a simply-transitive solvable group of isometries. Let \((M^n, g)\) be a simply-connected non-compact homogeneous Einstein space of dimension at most \(10\), which is de Rham irreducible. If \((M^n, g)\) admits a nonsemisimple transitive group of isometries, then \(M^n\) is diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb R^n\).