3-Manifolds with Yamabe invariant greater than that of $\RP^3$

Abstract

We complete the classification (started by Bray and the second author) of all closed 3-manifolds with Yamabe invariant greater than that of $\RP^3$, by showing that such manifolds are either $S^3$ or finite connected sums $# m(S^2 \times S^1) # n(S^2 \tilde{\times} S^1)$ for $m + n \geq 1$, where $S^2 \tilde{\times} S^1$ is the nonorientable $S^2$-bundle over $S^1$. A key ingredient is Aubin's Lemma, which says that if the Yamabe constant is positive, then it is strictly less than the Yamabe constant of any of its non-trivial finite conformal coverings. This lemma, combined with inverse mean curvature flow and with analysis of the Green's functions for the conformal Laplacians on specific finite and normal infinite Riemannian coverings, will allow us to construct a family of nice test functions on the finite coverings and thus prove the desired result.

27 pages. Many typos corrected and changes were made in Lema 3.6 and Section 7. To appear in JDG