Quaternion-Kähler manifolds with non-negative quaternionic sectional curvature

Abstract

Compact Hermitian symmetric spaces are Kähler manifolds with constant scalar curvature and non-negative sectional curvature. A famous result by A. Gray states that, conversely, a compact simply connected Kähler manifold with constant scalar curvature and non-negative sectional curvature is a Hermitian symmetric space. The aim of the present article is to transpose Gray's result to the quaternion-Kähler setting. In order to achieve this, we introduce the quaternionic sectional curvature of quaternion-Kähler manifolds, we show that every Wolf space has non-negative quaternionic sectional curvature, and we prove that, conversely, every quaternion-Kähler manifold with non-negative quaternionic sectional curvature is a Wolf space. The proof makes crucial use of the nearly Kähler twistor spaces of positive quaternion-Kähler manifolds.