arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jeffrey S. Case.
We discuss the solution of the Neumann problem associated with the CR Yamabe operator on a subset $Ω$ of the CR manifold $\mathbb{S}^3$ bounded by the Clifford torus $Σ$. We also discuss the Yamabe-type problem of finding a contact form on $Ω$ which has zero Tanaka--Webster scalar curvature and for which $Σ$ has constant $p$-mean curvature.
We prove the existence and uniqueness of weighted ambient metrics and weighted Poincaré metrics for smooth metric measure spaces.
We give a new CR invariant treatment of the bigraded Rumin complex and related cohomology groups via differential forms. A key benefit is the identification of balanced $A_\infty$-structures on the Rumin and bigraded Rumin complexes. We also prove related Hodge decomposition theorems. Among many applications, we give a sharp upper bound on the dimension of the Kohn--Rossi groups $H^{0,q}(M^{2n+1})$, $1\leq q\leq n-1$, of a closed strictly pseudoconvex manifold with a contact form of nonnegative pseudohermitian Ricci curvature; we prove a sharp CR analogue of the Frölicher inequalities in terms of the second page of a natural spectral sequence; we give new proofs of selected topological properties of closed Sasakian manifolds; and we generalize the Lee class $\mathcal{L}\in H^1(M;\mathscr{P})$ -- whose vanishing is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a pseudo-Einstein contact form -- to all nondegenerate orientable CR manifolds.
We give a complete classification of tangential bidifferential operators of total order at most $n$ which are expressed purely in terms of the Laplacian on the ambient space of an $n$-dimensional manifold. This gives a curved analogue of the classification, due to Ovsienko--Redou and Clerc, of conformally invariant bidifferential operators on the sphere. As an application, we construct a large class of formally self-adjoint conformally invariant differential operators.
We present a global conformal invariant on closed six-manifolds which obstructs the existence of a conformally Einstein metric. We show that this obstruction is nontrivial and, up to multiplication by a constant, is the unique such invariant. This also gives rise to a (possibly trivial) diffeomorphism invariant which obstructs the existence of an Einstein metric. We also discuss global conformal invariants which obstruct the existence of a conformally Einstein metric on closed six-manifolds with infinite fundamental group.
The Rumin algebra of a contact manifold is a contact invariant $C_\infty$-algebra of differential forms which computes the de Rham cohomology algebra. We recover this fact by giving a simple and explicit construction of the Rumin algebra via Markl's formulation of the Homotopy Transfer Theorem.
We construct $Q$-curvature operators on $d$-closed $(1,1)$-forms and on $\overline{\partial}_b$-closed $(0,1)$-forms on five-dimensional pseudohermitian manifolds. These closely related operators give rise to a new formula for the scalar $Q$-curvature. As applications, we give a cohomological characterization of CR five-manifolds which admit a $Q$-flat contact form; and we show that every closed, strictly pseudoconvex CR five-manifold with trivial first real Chern class admits a $Q$-flat contact form provided the $Q$-curvature operator on $\overline{\partial}_b$-closed $(0,1)$-forms is nonnegative.
We prove that every closed, universally embeddable CR three-manifold with nonnegative Yamabe constant and positive total $Q^\prime$-curvature is contact diffeomorphic to a quotient of the standard contact three-sphere. We also prove that every closed, embeddable CR three-manifold with zero Yamabe constant and nonnegative total $Q^\prime$-curvature is CR equivalent to a compact quotient of the Heisenberg group with its flat CR structure.
We introduce the notion of formally self-adjoint conformally covariant polydifferential operators and give some constructions of families of such operators. In one direction, we show that any homogeneous conformally variational scalar Riemannian invariant (CVI) induces one of these operators. In another direction, we use the ambient metric to give alternative constructions of certain operators produced this way, one of which is a formally self-adjoint, fourth-order, conformally covariant tridifferential operator which should be regarded as the simplest fully nonlinear analogue of the Paneitz operator.
We construct a natural conformally invariant one-form of weight $-2k$ on any $2k$-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold which is closely related to the Pfaffian of the Weyl tensor. On oriented manifolds, we also construct natural conformally invariant one-forms of weight $-4k$ on any $4k$-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold which are closely related to top degree Pontrjagin forms. The weight of these forms implies that they define functionals on the space of conformal Killing fields. On Riemannian manifolds, we show that this functional is trivial for the former form but not for the latter forms. As a consequence, we obtain global obstructions to the existence of an Einstein metric in a given conformal class.
We prove rigidity for the Lichnerowicz-type eigenvalue estimate for the Kohn Laplacian on strictly pseudoconvex three-manifolds with nonnegative CR Paneitz operator and positive Webster curvature.
We construct higher-dimensional analogues of the $\mathcal{I}^\prime$-curvature of Case and Gover in all CR dimensions $n\geq2$. Our $\mathcal{I}^\prime$-curvatures all transform by a first-order linear differential operator under a change of contact form and their total integrals are independent of the choice of pseudo-Einstein contact form on a closed CR manifold. We exhibit examples where these total integrals depend on the choice of general contact form, and thereby produce counterexamples to the Hirachi conjecture in all CR dimensions $n\geq2$.
We classify local minimizers of $\intσ_2+\oint H_2$ among all conformally flat metrics in the Euclidean $(n+1)$-ball, $4\leq n\leq 5$, for which the boundary has unit volume, subject to an ellipticity assumption. We also classify local minimizers of the analogous functional in the critical dimension $n+1=4$. If minimizers exist, this implies a fully nonlinear sharp Sobolev trace inequality. Our proof is an adaptation of the Frank--Lieb proof of the sharp Sobolev inequality, and in particular does not rely on symmetrization or Obata-type arguments.
Frank and Lieb gave a new, rearrangement-free, proof of the sharp Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequalities by exploiting their conformal covariance. Using this they gave new proofs of sharp Sobolev inequalities for the embeddings $W^{k,2}(\mathbb{R}^n)\hookrightarrow L^{\frac{2n}{n-2k}}(\mathbb{R}^n)$. We show that their argument gives a direct proof of the latter inequalities without passing through Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequalities, and, moreover, a new proof of a sharp fully nonlinear Sobolev inequality involving the $σ_2$-curvature. Our argument relies on nice commutator identities deduced using the Fefferman-Graham ambient metric.
We describe a set of conformally covariant boundary operators associated to the sixth-order GJMS operator on a conformally invariant class of manifolds which includes compactifications of Poincaré--Einstein manifolds. This yields a conformally covariant energy functional for the sixth-order GJMS operator on such manifolds. Our boundary operators also provide a new realization of the fractional GJMS operators of order one, three, and five as generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators. This allows us to prove some sharp Sobolev trace inequalities involving the interior $W^{3,2}$-seminorm, including an analogue of the Lebedev--Milin inequality on six-dimensional manifolds.
One way to generalize the boundary Yamabe problem posed by Escobar is to ask if a given metric on a compact manifold with boundary can be conformally deformed to have vanishing $σ_k$-curvature in the interior and constant $H_k$-curvature on the boundary. When restricting to the closure of the positive $k$-cone, this is a fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic boundary value problem with fully nonlinear Robin-type boundary condition. We prove a general bifurcation theorem which allows us to construct examples of compact Riemannian manifolds $(X,g)$ for which this problem admits multiple non-homothetic solutions in the case when $2k<\dim X$. Our examples are all such that the boundary with its induced metric is a Riemannian product of a round sphere with an Einstein manifold.
We construct examples of nondegenerate CR manifolds with Levi form of signature $(p,q)$, $2\leq p\leq q$, which are compact, not locally CR flat, and admit essential CR vector fields. We also construct an example of a noncompact nondegenerate CR manifold with signature $(1,n-1)$ which is not locally CR flat and admits an essential CR vector fields. These provide counterexamples to the analogue of the Lichnerowicz conjecture for CR manifolds with mixed signature.
Conformally variational Riemannian invariants (CVIs), such as the scalar curvature, are homogeneous scalar invariants which arise as the gradient of a Riemannian functional. We establish a wide range of stability and rigidity results involving CVIs, generalizing many such results for the scalar curvature.