Properness and finiteness of totally geodesic submanifolds in the convex core

Abstract

We study totally geodesic submanifolds in the convex core of geometrically finite rank-one locally symmetric manifolds. Although the infinite-volume setting can exhibit highly complicated behavior, including geodesic planes with fractal closures, we show that a strong rigidity persists inside the convex core. This rigidity has striking consequences in the infinite volume setting: every maximal totally geodesic submanifold of dimension at least two contained in the convex core is properly immersed and has finite volume, and only finitely many such submanifolds can occur. These results stand in sharp contrast to the behavior in the finite-volume setting. Moreover, combining this finiteness result with the work of Bader-Fisher-Miller-Stover and of Gromov-Schoen, we deduce that any geometrically finite rank-one manifold with infinitely many maximal totally geodesic submanifolds of dimension at least two and of finite volume must be arithmetic.