2009/10/20 by Gerhard Knieper, Knieper, Gerhard · 3 citations
Mathematics · #Differential Geometry (math.DG) #FOS: Mathematics #Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows #Geometry and complex manifolds #Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations #math.DG
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0910.3872
arxiv created 2009/10/20 · openalex publication_date 2009/10/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Lichnerowicz conjecture asserts that all harmonic manifolds are either flat or locally symmetric spaces of rank~1. This conjecture has been proved by Z. Szabó \citeSz for harmonic manifolds with compact universal cover. E. Damek and F. Ricci \citeDR provided examples showing that in the noncompact case the conjecture is wrong. However, such manifolds do not admit a compact quotient. In this paper we study, using a notion of rank, the asymptotic geometry and the geodesic flow on simply connected nonflat and noncompact harmonic manifolds denoted by X. In the first part of the paper we show that the following assertions are equivalent. The volume growth is purely exponential, the rank of X is one, the geodesic flow is Anosov with respect to the Sasaki metric, X is Gromov hyperbolic. In the second part of the paper we show that the geodesic flow is Anosov if X is a nonflat harmonic manifold with no focal points. In the course of the proof we obtain that certain partially hyperbolic flows on arbitrary Riemannian manifolds without focal points are Anosov, which is of interest beyond harmonic manifolds. Combining the results of this paper with the rigidity theorem's of \citeBCG, \citeBFL and \citeFL, we confirm the Lichnerowicz conjecture for all compact harmonic manifolds without focal points or with Gromov hyperbolic fundamental groups.