Scalar curvature and the multiconformal class of a direct product Riemannian manifold

For a closed, connected direct product Riemannian manifold $$(M, g)=(M_1, g_1) \times \cdots \times (M_l, g_l)$$ ( M , g ) = ( M 1 , g 1 ) × ⋯ × ( M l , g l ) , we define its multiconformal class $$ [\![ g ]\!]$$ [ [ g ] ] as the totality $$\{f_1^2g_1\oplus \cdots \oplus f_l^2g_l\}$$ { f 1 2 g 1 ⊕ ⋯ ⊕ f l 2 g l } of all Riemannian metrics obtained from multiplying the metric $$g_i$$ g i of each factor $$M_i$$ M i by a positive function $$f_i$$ f i on the total space M. A multiconformal class $$ [\![ g ]\!]$$ [ [ g ] ] contains not only all warped product type deformations of g but also the whole conformal class $$[\tilde{g}]$$ [ g ~ ] of every $$\tilde{g}\in [\![ g ]\!]$$ g ~ ∈ [ [ g ] ] . In this article, we prove that $$ [\![ g ]\!]$$ [ [ g ] ] contains a metric of positive scalar curvature if and only if the conformal class of some factor $$(M_i, g_i)$$ ( M i , g i ) does, under the technical assumption $$\dim M_i\ge 2$$ dim M i ≥ 2 . We also show that, even in the case where every factor $$(M_i, g_i)$$ ( M i , g i ) has positive scalar curvature, $$ [\![ g ]\!]$$ [ [ g ] ] contains a metric of scalar curvature constantly equal to $$-1$$ - 1 and with arbitrarily large volume, provided $$l\ge 2$$ l ≥ 2 and $$\dim M\ge 3$$ dim M ≥ 3 .