Polar and torus manifolds

Abstract

We show that quasitoric manifolds can be equipped with an invariant metric for which the torus action is polar. More generally, we show that an infinitesimally polar action of a torus admits an invariant Riemannian metric making it polar if and only if the real orbifold Euler class of its quotient vanishes. Because the orbit spaces of quasitoric manifolds are contractible simple polytopes, this cohomological obstruction trivially vanishes.