On Variational Properties of Quadratic Curvature Functionals

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a class of quadratic Riemannian curvature functionals on closed smooth manifold $M$ of dimension $n\ge 3$ on the space of Riemannian metrics on $M$ with unit volume. We study the stability of these functionals at the metric with constant sectional curvature as its critical point.

Accepted by SCIENCE CHINA Mathematics. Comments are welcome