Curvature and symmetry of Milnor spheres

Abstract

In this paper we explore the geometry and topology of cohomogeneity one manifolds, i.e. manifolds with a group action whose principal orbits are hypersurfaces. We show that the principal group action of every principal SO(3) and SO(4) bundle over S^4 extends to a cohomogeneity one action. As a consequence we prove that every vector bundle and every sphere bundle over S^4 has a complete metric with non-negative curvature. It is well known that 15 of the 27 exotic spheres in dimension 7 can be written as S^3 bundles over S^4 in infinitely many ways, and hence we obtain infinitely many non-negatively curved metrics on these exotic spheres. A further consequence will be that there are infinitely many almost free actions by SO(3) on S^7, i.e. all isotropy groups are finite. These actions preserve the Hopf fibration S^3 -> S^7 -> S^4 but do not extend to the disc D^8. We also construct infinitely many such actions on the 15 exotic 7-spheres mentioned above.