Lipschitz rigidity for scalar curvature

MaRDI QIDQ6402978zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Simone Cecchini, Bernhard Hanke, Thomas Schick

Publication date 23 June 2022

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quasiconformal mappings in (mathbb{R}^n), other generalizations (30C65) Global geometric and topological methods (à la Gromov); differential geometric analysis on metric spaces (53C23) Rigidity results (53C24) Spin and Spin({}^c) geometry (53C27) Index theory and related fixed-point theorems on manifolds (58J20) Lipschitz and coarse geometry of metric spaces (51F30)

Abstract: We prove the following Lipschitz rigidity result in scalar curvature geometry. Let $M$ be a closed smooth connected spin manifold of even dimension $n$, let $g$ be a Riemannian metric of regularity $W^{1,p}$, $p>n$, on $M$ whose distributional scalar curvature in the sense of Lee-LeFloch is bounded below by $n(n-1)$, and let $fcolon(M,g)omathbb{S}^n$ be a $1$-Lipschitz continuous (not necessarily smooth) map of non-zero degree to the unit $n$-sphere. Then $f$ is a metric isometry. This generalizes a result of Llarull (1998) and answers in the affirmative a question of Gromov (2019) in his "four lectures". Our proof is based on spectral properties of Dirac operators for low regularity Riemannian metrics and twisted with Lipschitz bundles. We argue that the existence of a non-zero harmonic spinor field forces $f$ to be quasiregular in the sense of Reshetnyak, and in this way connect the powerful theory for quasiregular maps to the Atiyah-Singer index theorem.

This page was built for publication: Lipschitz rigidity for scalar curvature

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6402978)