Gromov's critical decay conjecture for positive scalar curvature metrics

From papers

Let MM be an orientable nn-manifold equipped with a complete Riemannian metric of positive scalar curvature. For a complete Riemannian metric on MM, say that it has at most CC-quadratic decay of scalar curvature at infinity if, for some basepoint pMp\in M, there is an R>0R>0 such that the scalar curvature RM(x)R_M(x) satisfies

RM(x)>Crx2R_M(x)>\frac{C}{r_x^2}

for every xMx\in M with rx=d(p,x)Rr_x=d(p,x)\geq R. Gromov's conjecture. There exists a universal critical constant Cn>0C_n>0 such that: (1) for every C<CnC<C_n, MM admits a complete Riemannian metric of positive scalar curvature with at most CC-quadratic decay at infinity; and (2) if MM admits a complete Riemannian metric of positive scalar curvature with CC-quadratic decay at infinity for some C>CnC>C_n, then MM admits a complete Riemannian metric with uniformly positive scalar curvature. The conjecture proposes a sharp threshold between decay rates of positive scalar curvature and the existence of uniformly positive scalar curvature metrics on open manifolds; the supplied text does not state whether it is resolved.

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Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Anushree Das, “Some constructions of uniformly positive scalar curvature metrics on open manifolds”, arXiv:2606.19619 (2026).

Additional references

3 papers in this index state this conjecture (2024–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2508.04173, arXiv:2407.07198.

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