Nonnegative scalar curvature and area decreasing maps on complete foliated manifolds

TL;DR

This paper proves that under certain curvature and topological conditions, complete foliated manifolds cannot admit area decreasing maps of non-zero degree, extending key non-existence results and confirming Gromov's conjecture in the foliated setting.

Contribution

It establishes new non-existence theorems for area decreasing maps on foliated manifolds with positive leafwise scalar curvature, confirming Gromov's sharp foliated twisting conjecture.

Findings

If leafwise scalar curvature exceeds a specific bound, then the infimum of leafwise scalar curvature is negative.

Extension of Gromov's foliated twisting conjecture to complete noncompact manifolds.

Generalization of Gromov-Lawson non-existence results to foliated manifolds.

Abstract

Let $(M,g^{TM})$ be a noncompact complete Riemannian manifold of dimension $n$, and let $F\subseteq TM$ be an integrable subbundle of $TM$. Let $g^F=g^{TM}|_{F}$ be the restricted metric on $F$ and let $k^F$ be the associated leafwise scalar curvature. Let $f:M\to S^n(1)$ be a smooth area decreasing map along $F$, which is locally constant near infinity and of non-zero degree. We show that if $k^F> {\rm rk}(F)({\rm rk}(F)-1)$ on the support of ${\rm d}f$, and either $TM$ or $F$ is spin, then $\inf (k^F)<0$. As a consequence, we prove Gromov's sharp foliated $\otimes_\varepsilon$-twisting conjecture. Using the same method, we also extend two famous non-existence results due to Gromov and Lawson about $\Lambda^2$-enlargeable metrics (and/or manifolds) to the foliated case.