# Members & Guests

## Project

15Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds

## Publications within SPP2026

Let M be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on M has non-trivial higher homotopy groups.

Moreover, denote by \mathcal{M}^+_0(M) the moduli space of positive scalar cuvature metrics on M associated to the group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of M. We show that if M belongs to a certain class of manifolds which includes (2n−2)-connected (4n−2)-dimensional manifolds, then the fundamental group of \mathcal{M}^+_0(M) is non-trivial.

 Journal Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN Link to preprint version Link to published version

The main result of this paper is that when M_0, M_1 are two simply connected spin manifolds of the same dimension d≥5 which both admit a metric of positive scalar curvature, the spaces \mathcal{M}^+(M0) and \mathcal{M}^+(M_1) of such metrics are homotopy equivalent. This supersedes a previous result of Chernysh and Walsh which gives the same conclusion when M_0 and M_1 are also spin cobordant.

We also prove an analogous result for simply connected manifolds which do not admit a spin structure; we need to assume that d≠8 in that case.

In this paper we study non-negatively curved and rationally elliptic GKM4 manifolds and orbifolds. We show that their rational cohomology rings are isomorphic to the rational cohomology of certain model orbifolds. These models are quotients of isometric actions of finite groups on non-negatively curved torus orbifolds.

Moreover, we give a simplified proof of a characterisation of products of simplices among orbit spaces of locally standard torus manifolds. This characterisation was originally proved in [Wiemeler, Torus manifolds and non-negative curvature, arXiv:1401.0403] and was used there to obtain a classification of non-negatively curved torus manifolds.

In this work, it is shown that a simply-connected, rationally-elliptic torus orbifold is equivariantly rationally homotopy equivalent to the quotient of a product of spheres by an almost-free, linear torus action, where this torus has rank equal to the number of odd-dimensional spherical factors in the product. As an application, simply-connected, rationally-elliptic manifolds admitting slice-maximal torus actions are classified up to equivariant rational homotopy. The case where the rational-ellipticity hypothesis is replaced by non-negative curvature is also discussed, and the Bott Conjecture in the presence of a slice-maximal torus action is proved.

 Journal Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN Volume 18 Pages 5786--5822 Link to preprint version Link to published version

We study spaces and moduli spaces of Riemannian metrics with non-negative Ricci or non-negative sectional curvature on closed and open manifolds and construct, in particular, the first classes of manifolds for which these spaces have non-trivial rational homotopy, homology and cohomology groups. We also show that in every dimension at least seven (respectively, at least eight) there exist closed (respectively, open) manifolds for which the moduli space of Riemannian metrics with non-negative sectional curvature has infinitely many path components. An analogous statement holds for spaces of non-negative Ricci curvature metrics in every dimension at least eleven (respectively, twelve).