On Yamabe constants of Riemannian products

Abstract

For a closed Riemannian manifold $(M^m,g)$ of constant positive scalar curvature and any other closed Riemannian manifold $(N^n,h)$, we show that the limit of the Yamabe constants of the Riemannian products $(M\times N,g+rh)$ as $r$ goes to infinity is equal to the Yamabe constant of $(M^m\times R^n,[g+g_E])$ and is strictly less than the Yamabe invariant of $S^{m+n}$ provided $n\ge 2$. We then consider the minimum of the Yamabe functional restricted to functions of the second variable and we compute the limit in terms of the best constants of the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities.

17 pages, 2 figures