On the space of riemannian metrics satisfying surgery stable curvature conditions

Abstract

We utilize a condition for algebraic curvature operators called surgery stability as suggested by the work of Hoelzel to investigate the space of riemannian metrics over closed manifolds satisfying these conditions. Our main result is a parametrized Gromov–Lawson construction with not necessarily trivial normal bundles and shows that the homotopy type of this space of metrics is invariant under surgeries of a suitable codimension. This is a generalization of a well-known theorem by Chernysh and Walsh for metrics of positive scalar curvature. As an application of our method, we show that the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on quaternionic projective spaces are homotopy equivalent to that on spheres.