Lokale Geometrie des Radius in Riemannschen Mannigfaltigkeiten. I, II (Q796119)

Let (M,g) be a Riemannian manifold of class \(C^{\omega}\) and \(m\in M\). Denote by \(r=d(m,p)\) the distance from p to m, where p belongs to a normal neighborhood of m. The main purpose of both parts is to classify locally all Riemannian manifolds such that \(\Delta^ kr^{\ell}=0\) for all sufficiently small r and all \(m\in M\). Here \(k,\ell \in {\mathbb{N}}_ 0\) and \(\Delta\) denotes the Laplacian. In the first part the author considers first the case \(k=1\), \(\ell\) arbitrary. One obtains quickly that the manifold is harmonic and then one finds at once \(\ell =1/(n-2)\) and \(M^ n\) is locally flat. Then he treats the case \(k=2\), \(\ell =1\) or 2 for the class of harmonic manifolds. In all these cases the results are obtained from a direct integration of the differential equation for the volume density function of the exponential map. The problem becomes more difficult when one deletes the harmonicity condition because in that case the differential equation is much more complicated. For this reason the author develops in the second part a method to get information about the coefficients in the power series expansion for \(\Delta^ kr^{\ell}\). Finally some results are derived concerning the classification problem for special values of k and \(\ell\). They are similar to the results given in [\textit{R. Caddeo} and \textit{P. Matzeu}, Varietà riemanniane con potenze delle funzione distanza biarmoniche, Rend. Semin. Univ. Cagliari]. Several open problems are left. As an example we refer to a forthcoming paper by R. Caddeo and the reviewer concerning the conjecture \(''\Delta^ 2r^{2-n}=0\) implies local flatness''. There we show that there is a connection with the class of harmonic manifolds but the general problem still remains open.