Morse-Novikov cohomology of almost nonnegatively curved manifolds (Q776815)

Let \(M^n\) be a smooth \(n\)-manifold and \(\theta\) a real valued closed 1-form on \(M^n\). Let \(\Omega^{p}(M^n)\) be the space of real smooth \(p\)-forms and \(d_{\theta}\colon \Omega^{p}(M^n)\to \Omega^{p+1}(M^n) \) defined by \(d_{\theta}\alpha =d\alpha + \theta \wedge \alpha\) for \(\alpha \in \Omega^{p}(M^n)\). The cohomology group \(H^{p}(M^m, \theta)=H^{p}(\Omega^{\ast}(M^n),d_{\theta}) \) associated to the complex \(\cdots \longrightarrow \Omega^{p}(M^n)\stackrel{d_{\theta}}{\longrightarrow} \Omega^{p}(M^n)\stackrel{d_{\theta}}{\longrightarrow} \Omega^{p+1}(M^n)\rightarrow \cdots\) is called the \(p\)-th Morse-Novikov cohomology group or \(M^{n}\) with respect to \(\theta\). The groups \(H^{p}(M^m, \theta)\) depends only on the deRham cohomology class of \(\theta\). The Morse-Novikov cohomology ``share many properties with the de Rham cohomology''. For instance, if \([\theta]=0\), the Morse-Novikov cohomology group \(H^{p}(M^{n},\theta)\) is isomorphic to the deRham cohomology group \(H^{p}_{dR}(M^{n})\). If \(\theta \in H^{1}_{dR}(M^{n})\), \([\theta]\neq 0\), then \(H^{p}(M,\theta)=0\) for every \(p=0,1,\ldots\), provided \(M\) has almost nonnegative sectional curvature. This is the content of the main result (Theorem 1.1) of this article. Recall that a closed Riemannian manifold \(M^n\) has almost non-negative sectional curvature if it admits a sequence of smooth Riemannian metrics \(g_i\) satisfying \(\operatorname{Sec}(g_i)\geq -1/i\) and \(\operatorname{Diam}(g_i)\leq 1\). It is known that closed Riemannian manifolds \(M^n\) with almost non-negative sectional curvature is almost nilpotent space, this is, there is a finite cover \(\overline{M}^n\) of \(M^n\) such that the fundamental group \(\pi_1(\overline{M}^n)\) is a nilpotent group that operates nilpotently on \(\pi_{k}(\overline{M}^n)\) for every \(k\geq 2\), see [\textit{K. Fukaya} and \textit{T. Yamaguchi}, Ann. Math. (2) 136, No. 2, 253--333 (1992; Zbl 0770.53028)]. The second result of the article (Theorem 1.2) states \(H^{p}(M,\theta)=0\) for every \(p=0,1,\ldots\), provided \(\theta \in H^{1}_{dR}(M^{n})\), \([\theta]\neq 0\) and \(M\) is almost nilpotent space. The natural extension of Theorems 1.1 and 1.2 is to prove the vanishing of cohomology groups \(H^{p}(M,\theta)\) in the class of closed Riemannian manifolds with almost nonnegative Ricci curvature, i.e., there exists a sequence of smooth metrics satisfying \(\operatorname{Ric}(g_i)\geq (n-1)/i\), \(\operatorname{Diam}(g_i)\leq 1\). That fails, the example constructed by \textit{M. T. Anderson} [Duke Math. J. 68, No. 1, 67--82 (1992; Zbl 0767.53029)] is the counter example. However if \(M^n\) is a closed Riemannian manifold with almost nonnegative Ricci curvature and the curvature operator of \(g_i\) is uniformly bounded from below by \(-\operatorname{Id}\) then for any \(\theta \in H^{1}_{dR}(M^{n})\), \([\theta]\neq 0\) there exists \(t\neq 0\) such that \(H^{p}(M^n, t\theta)=0\) for every \(p=0,1,\ldots\). This is the content of Theorem 1.4.