Manifolds with small Dirac eigenvalues are nilmanifolds (Q885817)

It is well known that the spinor bundle of a Riemannian spin manifold \(M\) allows parallel sections only if \(M\) carries special holonomy; this was proved by \textit{N. J. Hitchin} in [Adv. Math. 14, 1--55 (1974; Zbl 0284.58016)]. This paper analyses manifolds carrying almost parallel spinors, i.e., manifolds such that a given number of eigenvalues of either the Bochner Laplacian \(\nabla^*\nabla\) or the Dirac operator \(D\) on the spinor bundle are smaller than a constant that depends on curvature, diameter, etc. Then, similar conclusions about the geometry of \(M\) are possible, which are weaker than in the parallel case. The main tool in the proofs is a Moser iteration. For differential forms, a similar quantitative result has been proved by \textit{P. Petersen} and \textit{C. Sprouse} in [Proceedings of the 5th Pacific Rim geometry conference, 2000. Tohoku Math. Publ. 20, 139--145 (2001; Zbl 1065.53035)]. The main result of the present article concerns the \(r\)-th eigenvalue of the Bochner Laplacian \(\nabla^*\nabla\) on an \(n\)-dimensional manifolds with bounded curvature and diameter, where \(r=2^{[\frac n2]-1}\) for \(n\geq 4\) and~\(r=1\) otherwise. If this eigenvalue is small, then \(M\) is a nilmanifold, equipped with the trivial spin structure. A similar conclusion holds if the \(r\)-th eigenvalue of \(D^2\) is small and the scalar curvature is bounded from below by a small negative constant. An example shows that one cannot choose a smaller \(r\). There is a similar result by \textit{J. Lott} in [Geom. Dedicata 91, 175--196 (2002; Zbl 1001.58020)], where all eigenvalues are controlled. With similar methods, the authors show that if the scalar curvature satisfies \(\roman{scal}\geq n(n-1)\) and there are \(r\) eigenvalues of \(D\) inside \([0,\frac n2+\epsilon)\), then \(M\) is \(C^{1,\alpha}\)-close to a quotient of the standard sphere. The constant \(r\) given here is not optimal; the optimal value of \(r\) has been found later by A. Vargas in his PhD thesis. Another result in the paper under review concerns the first eigenvalue of the Bochner Laplacian on spin manifolds \(M\) with an additional lower volume bound. If this eigenvalue is small, then \(M\) is \(C^{1,\alpha}\) close to a Ricci-flat Einstein manifold.