Chern's conjecture for special affine manifolds
An affine manifold \(X\) in the sense of differential geometry is a differentiable manifold admitting an atlas of charts with values in an affine space with locally constant affine change of coordinates. Equivalently, it is a manifold whose tangent bundle admits a flat torsion free connection. Around 1955 Chern conjectured that the Euler characteristic of any compact affine manifold has to vanish. In this paper the author proves Chern's conjecture in the case where \(X\) moreover admits a parallel volume form. The existence of a flat connection on an oriented bundle does not imply the vanishing of its Euler classs, and Chern's conjecture is not a general statement on flat (not necessarily torsion free) connections on tangent bundles. \textit{J. P. Benzécri} [Variétés localement plates. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University (Ph. D. Thesis) (1955)] proved Chern's conjecture for closed \(2\)-manifolds. Among them only tori admit affine structures. \textit{J. W. Milnor} [Comment. Math. Helv. 32, 215--223 (1958; Zbl 0196.25101)] proved: Theorem. An oriented \(\mathbb R^2\) bundle \(E\) over a closed oriented surface \(\Sigma_g\) of genus \(g\geq 2\) admits a flat connection \(\nabla\) if and only if \(|\chi(E)| < g\). This strengthens Benzécri's result: The tangent bundle of a closed connected surface \(X\) admits a flat, not necessarily torsion-free, connection if and only if \(\chi(X)=0\). Milnor asked whether this result generalizes to higher dimensions. \textit{J. Smillie} [Comment. Math. Helv. 52, 453--455 (1977; Zbl 0357.53021)] showed that it does not. \textit{B. Kostant} and \textit{D. Sullivan} [Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 81, 937--938 (1975; Zbl 0313.57009)] proved Chern's conjecture in the case where the affine structure on \(X\) is moreover complete. \textit{M. W. Hirsch} and \textit{W. P. Thurston} [Ann. Math. (2) 101, 369--390 (1975; Zbl 0321.57015)] proved Chern's conjecture when the image of the holonomy homomorphism is built out of amenable groups by forming free products and taking finite extensions. Recently, \textit{M. Bucher} and \textit{T. Gelander} [Adv. Math. 228, No. 3, 1503--1542 (2011; Zbl 1226.53034)] proved Chern's conjecture for varieties that are locally a product of surfaces.
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