The Ricci pinching functional on solvmanifolds

Abstract

AbstractWe study the natural functional $F=\frac {\operatorname {scal}^2}{|\operatorname {Ric}|^2}$ on the space of all non-flat left-invariant metrics on all solvable Lie groups of a given dimension $n$. As an application of properties of the beta operator, we obtain that solvsolitons are the only global maxima of $F$ restricted to the set of all left-invariant metrics on a given unimodular solvable Lie group, and beyond the unimodular case, we obtain the same result for almost-abelian Lie groups. Many other aspects of the behavior of $F$ are clarified.