A ``stable version of the Gromov-Lawson conjecture

Authors Stephan Stolz, Jonathan M. Rosenberg

Publication date 24 August 1995

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/dg-ga/9407002

fundamental group spin manifold positive scalar curvature metrics stable Gromov-Lawson conjecture

Global Riemannian geometry, including pinching (53C20)

Abstract: We discuss a conjecture of Gromov and Lawson, later modified by Rosenberg, concerning the existence of metrics of positive scalar curvature. It says that a closed spin manifold

M

of dimension

n g e 5

has such a metric if and only if the index of a suitable ``Dirac" operator in

K O_{n} (C^{*} (p i_{1} (M)))

, the real

K

-theory of the group

C^{*}

-algebra of the fundamental group of

M

, vanishes. It is known that the vanishing of the index is necessary for existence of a positive scalar curvature metric on

M

, but this is known to be a sufficient condition only if

p i_{1} (M)

is the trivial group,

B b b Z / 2

, an odd order cyclic group, or one of a fairly small class of torsion-free groups. par We note that the groups

K O_{n} (C^{*} (p i))

are periodic in

n

with period

8

, whereas there is no obvious periodicity in the original geometric problem. This leads us to introduce a ``stable version of the Gromov-Lawson conjecture, which makes the weaker statement that the product of $M$ with enough copies of the ``Bott manifold" $B$ has a positive scalar curvature metric if and only if the index of the Dirac operator on $M$ vanishes. (Here $B$ is a simply connected $8$ -manifold which represents the periodicity element in $K O_{8} (p t)$ .) We prove the stable Gromov-Lawson conjecture for all spin manifolds with finite fundamental group and for many spin manifolds with infinite fundamental group.

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