Volume and macroscopic scalar curvature

We prove the macroscopic cousins of three conjectures: (1) a conjectural bound of the simplicial volume of a Riemannian manifold in the presence of a lower scalar curvature bound, (2) the conjecture that rationally essential manifolds do not admit metrics of positive scalar curvature, (3) a conjectural bound of $$\ell ^2$$ ℓ 2 -Betti numbers of aspherical Riemannian manifolds in the presence of a lower scalar curvature bound. The macroscopic cousin is the statement one obtains by replacing a lower scalar curvature bound by an upper bound on the volumes of 1-balls in the universal cover.

Leaps and bounds towards scale separation

In a broad class of gravity theories, the equations of motion for vacuum compactifications give a curvature bound on the Ricci tensor minus a multiple of the Hessian of the warping function. Using results in so-called Bakry-Émery geometry, we put rigorous general bounds on the KK scale in gravity compactifications in terms of the reduced Planck mass or the internal diameter. We reexamine in this light the local behavior in type IIA for the class of supersymmetric solutions most promising for scale separation. We find that the local O6-plane behavior cannot be smoothed out as in other local examples; it generically turns into a formal partially smeared O4.

Harmonic branched coverings and uniformization of CAT(k) spheres

Let S be a surface with a metric d satisfying an upper curvature bound in the sense of Alexandrov (i.e. via triangle comparison). We show that an almost conformal harmonic map from a surface into ( S , d ) {(S,d)} is a branched covering. As a consequence, if ( S , d ) {(S,d)} is homeomorphically equivalent to the 2-sphere 𝕊 2 {\mathbb{S}^{2}} , then it is conformally equivalent to 𝕊 2 {\mathbb{S}^{2}} .

Segment Inequality and Almost Rigidity Structures for Integral Ricci Curvature

We will show the Cheeger–Colding segment inequality for manifolds with integral Ricci curvature bound. By using this segment inequality, the almost rigidity structure results for integral Ricci curvature will be derived by a similar method as in [1]. And the sharp Hölder continuity result of [7] holds in the limit space of manifolds with integral Ricci curvature bound.