Moduli spaces of nonnegative sectional curvature and non-unique souls

Abstract

We apply various topological methods to distinguish connected components of moduli spaces of complete Riemannian metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on open manifolds. The new geometric ingredient is that souls of nearby nonnegatively curved metrics are ambiently isotopic.

arXiv commentProposition 4.4 corrected. A mistake in Proposition 2.8 is discussed after its statement