Deformations of the hemisphere that increase scalar curvature (Q635852)

The authors disprove the Min-Oo conjecture [\textit{M. Min-Oo}, ``Scalar curvature rigidity of certain symmetric spaces'', CRM Proc. Lect. Notes 15, 127--136 (1998; Zbl 0911.53032)], which claims that a Riemannian metric \(g\) on the hemisphere \(S_+^n\), \(n \geq 3\), which coincides with the standard metric on the boundary, and which satisfies the following two properties: 1. the boundary is totally geodesic with respect to \(g\), 2. the scalar curvature of \(g\) is at least \(n(n-1)\), is the standard spherical metric. This conjecture was supported by a result by Miao (2002) about an analogous characterization of the Euclidean metric and by the generalization of a theorem of Miao by Y. Shi and L. F. Tam (2002).