We study harmonic maps from a 3-manifold with boundary to $mathbb{S}^1$ and prove a special case of dihedral rigidity of three dimensional cubes whose dihedral angles are $pi / 2$. Furthermore we give some applications to mapping torus hyperbolic 3-manifolds.
For a harmonic map $u:M^3to S^1$ on a closed, oriented $3$--manifold, we establish the identity $$2pi int_{thetain S^1}chi(Sigma_{theta})geq frac{1}{2}int_{thetain S^1}int_{Sigma_{theta}}(|du|^{-2}|Hess(u)|^2+R_M)$$ relating the scalar curvature $R_M$ of $M$ to the average Euler characteristic of the level sets $Sigma_{theta}=u^{-1}{theta}$. As our primary application, we extend the Kronheimer--Mrowka characterization of the Thurston norm on $H_2(M;mathbb{Z})$ in terms of $|R_M^-|_{L^2}$ and the harmonic norm to any closed $3$--manifold containing no nonseparating spheres. Additional corollaries include the Bray--Brendle--Neves rigidity theorem for the systolic inequality $(min R_M)sys_2(M)leq 8pi$, and the well--known result of Schoen and Yau that $T^3$ admits no metric of positive scalar curvature.
In the first part of this paper, we prove the extensibility of an arbitrary boundary metric to a positive scalar curvature (PSC) metric inside for a compact manifold with boundary, which completely solves an open problem due to Gromov (see Question ref{extension1}). Then we introduce a fill-in invariant (see Definition ref{fillininvariant}) and discuss its relationship with the positive mass theorems for asymptotically flat (AF) and asymptotically hyperbolic (AH) manifolds. Moreover, we prove that the positive mass theorem for AH manifolds implies that for AF manifolds. In the end, we give some estimates for the fill-in invariant, which provide some partially affirmative answers to Gromovs conjectures formulated in cite{Gro19} (see Conjecture ref{conj0} and Conjecture ref{conj1} below)
In this article, we will use the harmonic mean curvature flow to prove a new class of Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities for strictly convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space in terms of total curvature, which is the integral of Gaussian curvature on the hypersurface. We will also use the harmonic mean curvature flow to prove a new class of geometric inequalities for horospherically convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space. Using these new Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities and the inverse mean curvature flow, we obtain an Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality for strictly convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space, which was previously proved for horospherically convex hypersurfaces by Wang and Xia [44]. Finally, we use the mean curvature flow to prove a new Heintze-Karcher type inequality for hypersurfaces with positive Ricci curvature in hyperbolic space.
We first present a warped product manifold with boundary to show the non-uniqueness of the positive constant scalar curvature and positive constant boundary mean curvature equation. Next, we construct a smooth counterexample to show that the compactness of the set of lower energy solutions to the above equation fails when the dimension of the manifold is not less than $62$.
The Han-Li conjecture states that: Let $(M,g_0)$ be an $n$-dimensional $(ngeq 3)$ smooth compact Riemannian manifold with boundary having positive (generalized) Yamabe constant and $c$ be any real number, then there exists a conformal metric of $g_0$ with scalar curvature $1$ and boundary mean curvature $c$. Combining with Z. C. Han and Y. Y. Lis results, we answer this conjecture affirmatively except for the case that $ngeq 8$, the boundary is umbilic, the Weyl tensor of $M$ vanishes on the boundary and has a non-zero interior point.