On the moduli space of positive Ricci curvature metrics on homotopy spheres (Q658408)

Let \(M\) be a compact smooth manifold. Let \(\text{Riem}(M)\) be the space of all smooth Riemannian metrics on \(M\) and let \(\text{Riem}^{\text{Ric}+}(M)\) be the subspace of all Ricci positive metrics. Give these spaces the usual \(C^\infty\) Frechet topology. Let \(\text{Riem}^{\text{Ric}+}(M)/\text{Diff}(M)\) be the associated moduli space. The authors show the following: Theorem A. Let \(M^{4k-1}\) be any homotopy sphere bounding a parallelizable manifold where \(k>1\). Then the moduli space \(\text{Riem}^{\text{Ric}+}(M)/\text{Diff}(M)\) has infinitely many components. Theorem B. There are manifolds in infinitely many dimensions for which the moduli space of Ricci positive metrics has infinitely many components. The paper begins with an introduction. Section 2 treats the construction of homotopy spheres as boundaries of plumbed manifolds and the \(s\)-invariant of Kreck and Stolz. Section 3 deals with surgery on Ricci positive manifolds. In Section 4, it is shown how to deform a positive Ricci curvature metric on an exotic sphere through positive scalar curvature metrics into a form that can be extended across the corresponding bounding manifold -- the extension is presented in Section 5. Theorem A is established in Section 6.