Milnor conjecture (Ricci curvature)

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In 1968 John Milnor conjectured [1] that the fundamental group of a complete manifold is finitely generated if its Ricci curvature stays nonnegative. In an oversimplified interpretation, such a manifold has a finite number of "holes". A version for almost-flat manifolds holds from work of Gromov. [2] [3]

In two dimensions has finitely generated fundamental group as a consequence that if for noncompact , then it is flat or diffeomorphic to , by work of Cohn-Vossen from 1935. [4] [5]

In three dimensions the conjecture holds due to a noncompact with being diffeomorphic to or having its universal cover isometrically split. The diffeomorphic part is due to Schoen-Yau (1982) [6] [5] while the other part is by Liu (2013). [7] [5] Another proof of the full statement has been given by Pan (2020). [8] [5]

In 2023 Bruè, Naber and Semola disproved in two preprints the conjecture for six [9] or more [5] dimensions by constructing counterexamples that they described as "smooth fractal snowflakes". The status of the conjecture for four or five dimensions remains open. [3]

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References

  1. Milnor, J. (1968). "A note on curvature and fundamental group". Journal of Differential Geometry. 2 (1): 1–7. doi: 10.4310/jdg/1214501132 . ISSN   0022-040X.
  2. Gromov, M. (1978-01-01). "Almost flat manifolds". Journal of Differential Geometry. 13 (2). doi:10.4310/jdg/1214434488. ISSN   0022-040X.
  3. 1 2 Cepelewicz, Jordana (2024-05-14). "Strangely Curved Shapes Break 50-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 2024-05-15.
  4. Cohn-Vossen, Stefan (1935). "Kürzeste Wege und Totalkrümmung auf Flächen". Compositio Mathematica. 2: 69–133. ISSN   1570-5846.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Bruè, Elia; Naber, Aaron; Semola, Daniele (2023). "Fundamental Groups and the Milnor Conjecture". arXiv: 2303.15347 [math.DG].
  6. Schoen, Richard; Yau, Shing-Tung (1982-12-31), Yau, Shing-tung (ed.), "Complete Three Dimensional Manifolds with Positive Ricci Curvature and Scalar Curvature", Seminar on Differential Geometry. (AM-102), Princeton University Press, pp. 209–228, doi:10.1515/9781400881918-013, ISBN   978-1-4008-8191-8 , retrieved 2024-05-24
  7. Liu, Gang (August 2013). "3-Manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature". Inventiones Mathematicae. 193 (2): 367–375. arXiv: 1108.1888 . Bibcode:2013InMat.193..367L. doi:10.1007/s00222-012-0428-x. ISSN   0020-9910.
  8. Pan, Jiayin (2020). "A proof of Milnor conjecture in dimension 3". Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. 2020 (758): 253–260. arXiv: 1703.08143 . doi:10.1515/crelle-2017-0057. ISSN   1435-5345.
  9. Bruè, Elia; Naber, Aaron; Semola, Daniele (2023). "Six dimensional counterexample to the Milnor Conjecture". arXiv: 2311.12155 [math.DG].