Is the warped product: $dr^{2} + r^{2} \gamma$ always flat in 3 dimensions

differential-geometryriemannian-geometry

Suppose you have a Riemannian 2-sphere $(S^{2} , \gamma)$. Define a metric $g$ on $M = S^{2} \times [1,\infty)$ in this way:

If $(x_{1}, x_2)$ is a coordinate chart on $S^{2}$ then
$$g = dr^{2} + r^{2}\gamma_{ij}dx^i dx^j$$
Where $i,j = 1,2$. Notice that $\gamma_{ij}$ does not depend on $r$ and so this is a warped product. My question is: is this metric flat? And is this metric the Euclidean metric on $M$?

Let us fix a coordinate chart on $S^{2}$ call it $(\theta, \phi) \in U$ where $U$ is some open set of $\mathbb{R}^2$. Then we are looking at $(U\times [1,\infty) , g)$ where $g = dr^2 + \tilde{\gamma}$ where $\tilde{\gamma} = r^2 \gamma$.

I think this means that the hypersurfaces $\{ r = r_{0} \}$ are all totally umbilical since the second fundamental form $K$ satisfies:

$$K_{ij} = -\frac12 \frac{d}{dr} \tilde{\gamma} = -\frac1r \tilde{\gamma} $$

So the principle curvatures are $-\frac1r $ and so the Gaussian curvature is $\frac{1}{r^2} $ . Using this, I computed the Rici curvature components of M and found them to be $0$ (But I don’t trust my computations at all). This implies that the Rieman curvature tensor vanishes on $M$ and so $M$ is flat (since the Weyl part of Rieman curvature tensor vanishes for 3-dim manifolds, the vanishing of the Ricci curvature implies the vanishing of the Rieman Curvature tensor). Is there any mistake in what I am doing?

Best Answer

There is an error in the computation of the Ricci curvature, but without more details it's not possible to say where.

From OP's comment under the question it appears that $\gamma$ is an arbitrary metric on $S^2$. The coordinates are local, so this question is more or less just asking about the behavior of the cone metric $$\hat \gamma := dr^2 + r^2 \pi^* \gamma$$ over a Riemannian surface $(\Sigma, \gamma)$ on $\hat\Sigma := \Bbb R_+ \times \Sigma$. Here, $\pi : \hat\Sigma = \Bbb R_+ \times \Sigma \to \Sigma$ is just the canonical projection onto the second factor. Computing directly$^*$ gives that the respective Ricci curvatures $\operatorname{Ric}, \widehat{\operatorname{Ric}}$ of $\gamma, \hat\gamma$ are related by $$\widehat{\operatorname{Ric}} = \pi^*(\operatorname{Ric} - \gamma) ,$$ and then forming traces gives that the respective scalar curvatures $R, \hat R$ are related by $$\hat R = r^{-2} \pi^* (R - 2) .$$ These two identities immediately give that $$\widehat{\operatorname{Ric}} = 0 \Leftrightarrow \operatorname{Ric} = \gamma \Leftrightarrow \hat R = 0 \Leftrightarrow R = 2 ,$$ which in particular recovers Yu Ding's observation from the comments.


$^*$One can compute these identities efficiently using isothermal coordinates: There are some local coordinates $(x_1, x_2)$ on $\Sigma$ for which $\gamma = e^{2 \Upsilon} (dx_1^2 + dx_2^2)$ for some smooth function $\Upsilon(x_1, x_2)$. Applying the Koszul Formula yields relations between $\hat\nabla$ and $\nabla$, e.g., $$\hat \nabla_{\partial_{x_i}} \partial_{x_j} = \nabla_{\partial_{x_i}} \partial_{x_j} - r \gamma(\partial_{x_i}, \partial_{x_j}) \partial_r ,$$ among simpler relations, and then compute the curvatures directly from these. (In this display equation, we've implicitly used the decompositions $T_{(r, p)} \hat\Sigma = T_r \Bbb R_+ \oplus T_p \Sigma$.)

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