Rigidityofgeneralizedlaplaciansandsomegeometric.PDFVIP

Aequationes Mathematicae 48 (1994) 143-162 0001-9054/94/030143-20 $1.50 + 0.20/0 University of Waterloo @ 1994 Birkh/iuser Verlag, Basel Rigidity of generalized laplacians and some geometric applications LIVIU I. NICOLAESCU Summary. Every generalized laplacian L defined on a manifold M determines a sheaf of L-harmonic sections namely the sheaf of local solutions of Lu = 0. We study the converse problem: to what extent this sheaf determines the operator. Our main result states that the sheaf of L-harmonic sections determines the operator up to a conformal factor. Moreover, when the operator is a covariant laplacian and the dimension of M is greater than 2, the sheaf determines L up to a multiplicative constant. An interesting consequence is the following: if two Riemann metrics on a smooth manifold of dimension greater than 2 have the same sheaves of harmonic functions then they are homothetic. O. Introduction L et (M , g) be a n N - d i m e n s i o n a l R i e m a n n m a n i f o l d a n d c o n s i d e r the a s s o c i a t e d L a p l a c e - B e l t r a m i o p e r a t o r 1 Ag = ~ ~ t ( x / ~ g ° t 3 j ) , w i t h t~i =t3/~xi. ( i ) H e r e (giJ(x)) is the i n v e r s e m a t r i x o f (gig(X)) while ]gl = det(g,j(x)). W e n o w call a f u n c t i o n g-harmonic if it satisfies the e q u a t i o n Agu = 0. (2) The g harmonic functions form a sheaf