Complete locally conformally flat manifolds of negative curvature (Q997106)

The authors provide a detailed study of multiply warped product manifolds \(M= B\times F_1\times\cdots\times F_k\) equipped with the metric \(g = g_B\oplus f_1^2g_1\oplus\cdots \oplus f_k^2g_k\) that are locally conformally flat. First, they show that necessarily the base \((B,g_B)\) is locally conformally flat and the fibers \((F_i,g_i)\) are of constant sectional curvature for all \(i= 1,\dots,k\) provided that the dimension of \(F_i\) is greater than~3. In the case when the base manifold is of dimension greater than 3 and is of constant sectional curvature, they establish a necessary and sufficient condition for \(M\) to be locally conformally flat in the form of some complicated conditions to be satisfied by the warping functions \(f_i\). The conditions on \(f_i\) simplify when the base \((B,g_B)\) is locally Euclidean, and in this case a way to construct locally conformally flat multiple warped product is described. Characterisations of the fact that M is locally conformally flat are also provided when \(B\) is one dimensional. Based on such kind of results the authors provide examples of locally conformally flat manifolds of negative sectional curvature.