Rigidity of noncompact complete Bach-flat manifolds (Q962050)

A Riemannian metric on a four-manifold \(M\) is said to be Bach-flat if it is a critical point of the functional \[ g\mapsto \int_M| W|^2dV_g \] where \(g\) varies over Riemannian metrics and \(W\) denotes the Weyl curvature of \(g\). Bach-flat metrics are studied in [\textit{A. L. Besse}, Einstein manifolds. Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete. 3. Folge, Bd. 10. Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag. (1987; Zbl 0613.53001)]. It is known that Bach-flat metrics and Einstein metrics have many important properties in common. In the paper under review, \((M,g)\) is a noncompact complete Riemannian four-manifold with finite \(L_2\) curvature norm. The author proves that if \((M,g)\) has positive Yamabe constant, if it has zero scalar curvature and if it has a sufficiently small \(L_2\) bound on the curvature tensor, then \((M,g)\) is flat. In the case where \((M,g)\) has nonconstant scalar curvature, the author proves that if \((M,g)\) has sufficiently small \(L_2\) bound on the curvature tensor and \(L_{\frac{4}{3}}\) bound on scalar curvature, then \((M,g)\) is conformal to the flat space.