It is well known that critical points of the total scalar curvature functional S on the space of all smooth Riemannian structures of volume 1 on a compact manifold M are exactly the Einstein metrics. When the domain of S is restricted to the space of constant scalar curvature metrics, there has been a conjecture that a critical point is also Einstein or isometric to a standard sphere. In this paper we prove that n-dimensional critical points have vanishing n − 1 homology under a lower Ricci curvature bound for dimension less than 8.
On a compact n-dimensional manifold, it has been conjectured that a critical point metric of the total scalar curvature, restricted to the space of metrics with constant scalar curvature of unit volume, will be Einstein. This conjecture was proposed in 1984 by Besse, but has yet to be proved. In this paper, we prove that if the manifold with the critical point metric has harmonic curvature, then it is isometric to a standard sphere.1991 Mathematics Subject Classification. 58E11, 53C25.
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