An improved volume bound under Ricci and scalar curvature lower bounds
We study volume comparison for closed Riemannian manifolds satisfying a positive Ricci curvature lower bound together with an improved scalar curvature lower bound. We prove that if a closed Riemannian manifold $(N^n, g)$ satisfies $\operatorname{Ric}_g\ge (n-1)g$ and the scalar curvature $R_g\ge n(n-1)(1+\varepsilon)$, then its volume satisfies $$\lvert N\rvert_g \le \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+n\varepsilon}}\lvert\mathbb S^n\rvert. $$ In fact, assuming only $\mathrm{Ric}_g\ge(n-1)g$, we can prove that $$\frac{|N|_g}{\left|\mathbb{S}^n\right|} \le \frac{1}{|N|_g} \int_N\left(\frac{R_g}{n-1}-(n-1)\right)^{-\frac{1}{2}} d \mathrm{vol}_g. $$ The equality holds if and only if $N$ is isometric to the unit sphere. The proof combines a coefficient-adapted Jacobian comparison with a new integral shuffling comparison for scalar Jacobi solutions, inspired by Brown and Freedman \cite{BrownFreedman2022}. This yields an estimate that retains the full Ricci spectrum. The resulting volume bound agrees to first order in $\varepsilon$ with the factor appearing in Bray's conjecture. A further consequence of the argument is an averaged volume comparison for metric balls involving the scalar curvature. We also obtain a volume comparison theorem under a weighted integral lower bound on the Branson $Q$-curvature.