Isospectral metrics on five-dimensional spheres

Abstract

We construct isospectral pairs of Riemannian metrics on S^5 and on B^6, thus lowering by three the dimension of spheres and balls on which such metrics have been constructed previously (S^{n\ge 8} and B^{n\ge 9}). We also construct continuous families of isospectral Riemannian metrics on S^7 and on B^8. In each of these examples, the metrics can be chosen equal to the standard metric outside certain subsets of arbitrarily small volume.