Abstract
In these lectures I will discuss two kinds of problems from conformal geometry, with the goal of showing an important connection between them in four dimensions. The first problem is a fully nonlinear version of the Yamabe problem, known as the σk-Yamabe problem. This problem is, in general, not variational (or at least there is not a natural variational interpretation), and the underlying equation is second order but possibly not elliptic. Moreover, in contrast to the Yamabe problem, there is very little known (except for some examples and counterexamples) when the underlying manifold is negatively curved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adams, A sharp inequality of J. Moser for higher order derivatives.
Marcel Berger, A panoramic view of Riemannian geometry, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003.
Sun-Yung A.; Yang Paul C. Branson, Thomas P.; Chang.
Bent Branson, Thomas P.; rsted, Explicit functional determinants in four dimensions, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 113 (1991), 669–682.
Thomas P. Branson, An anomaly associated with 4-dimensional quantum gravity, Comm. Math. Phys. 178 (1996), 301–309.
Sun-Yung A. Chang, Matthew J. Gursky, and Paul C. Yang, Regularity of a fourth order nonlinear PDE with critical exponent, Amer. J. Math. 121 (1999), no. 2, 215–257.
Sun-Yung A. Chang, Matthew J. Gursky, and Paul Yang, An a priori estimate for a fully nonlinear equation on four-manifolds, J. Anal. Math. 87 (2002), 151–186, Dedicated to the memory of Thomas H. Wolff.
Sun-Yung A. Chang, Matthew J. Gursky, and Paul C. Yang, An equation of Monge-Ampère type in conformal geometry, and four-manifolds of positive Ricci curvature, Ann. of Math. (2) 155 (2002), no. 3, 709–787. MR 1 923 964
Sun-Yung Alice Chang, The moser-trudinger inequality and applications to some problems in conformal geometry, Nonlinear partial differential equations in differential geometry.
Sun-Yung A. Chang and Paul C. Yang, Extremal metrics of zeta function determinants on 4-manifolds, Ann. of Math. (2) 142 (1995), no. 1, 171–212.
Lawrence C. Evans, Classical solutions of fully nonlinear, convex, second-order elliptic equations, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 35 (1982), no. 3, 333–363. MR 83g:35038
David Gilbarg and Neil S. Trudinger, Elliptic partial differential equations of second order, second ed., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1983.
Matthew J. Gursky, Uniqueness of the functional determinant, Comm. Math. Phys. 189 (1997), no. 3, 655–665.
———, The Weyl functional, de Rham cohomology, and Kähler-Einstern metrics, Ann. of Math. (2) 148 (1998), 315–337.
———, The principal eigenvalue of a conformally invariant differential operator, with an application to semilinear elliptic PDE, Comm. Math. Phys. 207 (1999), no. 1, 131–143.
Matthew Gursky and Jeff Viaclovsky, Volume comparison and the σ k -Yamabe problem, Adv. Math. 187 (2004), 447–487.
Pengfei Guan, Jeff Viaclovsky, and Guofang Wang, Some properties of the Schouten tensor and applications to conformal geometry, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 355 (2003), no. 3, 925–933 (electronic).
Pengfei Guan and Guofang Wang, Local estimates for a class of fully nonlinear equations arising from conformal geometry, Int. Math. Res. Not. (2003), no. 26, 1413–1432. MR 1 976 045
N. V. Krylov, Boundedly inhomogeneous elliptic and parabolic equations in a domain, Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 47 (1983), no. 1, 75–108. MR 85g:35046
John M. Lee and Thomas H. Parker, The Yamabe problem, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 17 (1987), no. 1, 37–91.
R.; Sarnak-P. Osgood, B.; Phillips, Compact isospectral sets of surfaces, J. Funct. Anal. 80 (1988), 212–234.
———, Extremals of determinants of laplacians, J. Funct. Anal. 80 (1988), 148–211.
A. M. Polyakov, Quantum geometry of bosonic strings, Phys. Lett. B 103 (1981), 207–210.
———, Quantum geometry of fermionic strings, Phys. Lett. B 103 (1981), 211–213.
D. B. Ray and I. M. SingerR-torsion and the Laplacian on riemannian manifolds, Adv. in Math. 7 (1971), 145–210.
Weimin Sheng, Neil S. Trudinger, and Xu-Jia Wang, The Yamabe problem for higher order curvatures, preprint, 2005.
Karen K. Uhlenbeck and Jeff A. Viaclovsky, Regularity of weak solutions to critical exponent variational equations, Math. Res. Lett. 7 (2000), no. 5–6, 651–656.
Jeff A. Viaclovsky, Conformal geometry, contact geometry, and the calculus of variations, Duke Math. J. 101 (2000), no. 2, 283–316.
———, Conformal geometry and fully nonlinear equations, to appear in World Scientific Memorial Volume for S.S. Chern., 2006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gursky, M.J. (2009). PDEs in Conformal Geometry. In: Chang, SY., Ambrosetti, A., Malchiodi, A. (eds) Geometric Analysis and PDEs. Lecture Notes in Mathematics(), vol 1977. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01674-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01674-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-01673-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-01674-5
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)