Ricci-Flat Manifolds, Parallel Spinors and the Rosenberg Index

Abstract

Every closed connected Riemannian spin manifold of non-zero Â-genus or non-zero Hitchin invariant with non-negative scalar curvature admits a parallel spinor, in particular is Ricci-flat. In this note, we generalize this result to closed connected spin manifolds of non-vanishing Rosenberg index. This provides a criterion for the existence of a parallel spinor on a finite covering and yields that every closed connected Ricci-flat spin manifold of dimension ≥ 2 with non-vanishing Rosenberg index has special holonomy.