Compact asymptotically harmonic manifolds (Q692770)

The author endeavours to characterize the compact asymptotically harmonic manifolds. A complete Riemannian manifold is said to be harmonic if about any point, the mean curvature of sufficiently small geodesic spheres is constant. A complete Riemannian manifold without conjugate points such that the mean curvature of its horospheres is a universal constant is said to be asymptotically harmonic. Flat spaces and rank-1 locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type are examples of asymptotically harmonic manifolds. It is known [\textit{Z. I. Szabó}, J. Differ. Geom. 31, No. 1, 1--28 (1990; Zbl 0686.53042)] that any harmonic manifold with a conjugate point is a rank-1 locally symmetric space of compact type. Furthermore, Szabó observed that if \(X\) is a simply connected harmonic manifold without conjugate points then the mean curvature of any geodesic sphere is a constant that depends only on the radius of the sphere. From this, one concludes that every harmonic manifold without conjugate points is asymptotically harmonic. The question is then whether one can characterize asymptotically harmonic manifolds. In terms of its universal Riemannian cover \(X\), a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\) is asymptotically harmonic if there exists \(\alpha\in\mathbb R\) such that for all \(v\) in the tangent bundle \(SX\), the horofunction \(b_v\) is \(C^2\) and satisfies \(\Delta b_v=\alpha\). Under different sets of conditions, the universal cover of an asymptotically harmonic compact manifold is shown to be a rank-1 locally symmetric space of noncompact type. In a sense, flat spaces and rank one locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type are the main representatives of asymptotically harmonic manifolds. Another important result of the paper is `a new characterization of symmetric spaces among the so-called ``visiblity'' manifolds'.