Contractible open manifolds which embed in no compact, locally connected and locally 1-connected metric space

Abstract

This paper pays a visit to a famous contractible open 3-manifold $W^3$ proposed by R. H. Bing in 1950's. By the finiteness theorem \cite{Hak68}, Haken proved that $W^3$ can embed in no compact 3-manifold. However, until now, the question about whether $W^3$ can embed in a more general compact space such as a compact, locally connected and locally 1-connected metric 3-space was not known. Using the techniques developed in Sternfeld's 1977 PhD thesis \cite{Ste77}, we answer the above question in negative. Furthermore, it is shown that $W^3$ can be utilized to produce counterexamples for every contractible open $n$-manifold ($n\geq 4$) embeds in a compact, locally connected and locally 1-connected metric $n$-space.