On Brown-York mass and compactly conformal deformations of scalar curvature

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between Brown-York mass and scalar curvature deformations, establishing local rigidity results and constructing conformal deformations that alter scalar curvature on various manifolds.

Contribution

It introduces a connection between Brown-York mass and the first Dirichlet Eigenvalue, proving local positive mass theorems and constructing conformal deformations affecting scalar curvature.

Findings

Established a local positive mass type theorem for conformal metrics.

Demonstrated local conformal rigidity for small domains and nonpositive scalar curvature.

Constructed conformal deformations on product manifolds that change scalar curvature.

Abstract

In this article, we found a connection between Brown-York mass and the first Dirichlet Eigenvalue of a Schr\"odingier type operator. In particular, we proved a local positive mass type theorem for metrics conformal to the background one with suitable presumptions. As applications, we investigated compactly conformal deformations which either increase or decrease scalar curvature. We found local conformal rigidity phenomena occur in both cases for small domains and as for manifolds with nonpositive scalar curvature it is even more rigid in particular. On the other hand, such deformations exist for closed manifolds with positive scalar curvature. We also constructed such kind of deformations on a type of product manifolds that either increase or decrease their scalar curvature compactly and conformally. These results together answered a natural question arises in \cite{Corvino, Lohkamp}.