Rank two fundamental groups of positively curved manifolds (Q5950227)

In 1965 Chern asked if every abelian subgroup of the fundamental group of a manifold of positive curvature is cyclic. This was answered negatively by one of the authors, \textit{K.~Shankar} [J. Differ. Geom. 49, No. 1, 179-182 (1998; Zbl 0938.53017)] by exhibiting positively curved manifolds that admit a free isometric \(SO(3)\)--action and hence a free isometric \(\mathbb Z/2\oplus\mathbb Z/2\)-action. In this paper the authors construct positively curved manifolds with previously unknown fundamental groups. Most importantly, they show that certain ones of the (positively curved) Aloff-Wallach manifolds admit a free isometric \(\mathbb Z/3\oplus\mathbb Z/3\)-action. The question if there is a free isometric \(\mathbb Z/p\oplus\mathbb Z/p\)-action, \(p\) a prime \(>3,\) on some positively curved manifold remains open.