We prove a new lower bound for the first eigenvalue of the Dirac operator on a compact Riemannian spin manifold by refined Weitzenböck techniques. It applies to manifolds with harmonic curvature tensor and depends on the Ricci tensor. Examples show how it behaves compared to other known bounds.Subj. Class.: Differential Geometry. 2000 MSC: 53C27, 53C25. Keywords: Dirac operator, eigenvalues, harmonic Weyl tensor.
IntroductionIf M n is a compact Riemannian spin manifold with positive scalar curvature R, then each eigenvalue λ of the Dirac operator D satisfies the inequalitywhere R 0 is the minimum of R on M n . The estimate (1) is sharp in the sense that there exist manifolds for which (1) is an equality for the first eigenvalue λ 1 of D. If this is the case, then each eigenspinor ψ corresponding to λ 1 is a Killing spinor with the Killing number λ 1 /n, i.e., ψ is a solution of the field equationand M n must be an Einstein space (see [7]). A generalization of this inequality was proved in the paper [10], where a conformal lower bound for the spectrum of the Dirac operator occured. Moreover, for special Riemannian manifolds better estimates for the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator are known, see [11], [12]. However, all these estimates of the spectrum of the Dirac operators depend only on the scalar curvature of the underlying * Supported by the SFB 288 of the DFG.