Compactness of sequences of warped product circles over spheres with nonnegative scalar curvature (Q6624800)

In view of developements in Ricci geometry, \textit{M. Gromov} [Cent. Eur. J. Math. 12, No. 8, 1109--1156 (2014; Zbl 1315.53027); Cent. Eur. J. Math. 12, No. 7, 923--951 (2014; Zbl 1293.31006)] proposed to consider compactness theory in scalar curvature geometry. In parallel to the Gromov compactness and RCD theory, \textit{C. Sormani} [in: Measure theory in non-smooth spaces. Warsaw: De Gruyter Open. 288--338 (2017; Zbl 1485.53057)] conjectured that a sequence of three-dimensional Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature and some additional uniform geometric bounds should have a subsequence which converges in some sense to a limit space with some generalized notion of nonnegative scalar curvature. \N\NThe authors consider this question on three-dimensional warped product manifolds with warped circles over the standard 2-sphere, which have non-negative scalar curvature, uniform volume upper bound and positive lower bound on the minimum area of closed minimal surfaces in the manifold. They show that in this case the sequence will sub-converge to a \(W^{1,p}\) metric with \(p<2\). Moreover, the limit metric has nonnegative scalar curvature in the distributional sense as defined by \textit{D. A. Lee} and \textit{P. G. LeFloch} [Commun. Math. Phys. 339, No. 1, 99--120 (2015; Zbl 1330.53062)].