arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Igor Belegradek.
Motivated by a recent groundbreaking work of Ontaneda, we describe a sizable class of closed manifolds such that the product of each manifold in the class with the real line admits a complete metric of bounded negative sectional curvature which is an exponentially warped near one end and has finite volume near the other end.
This is a survey of topological properties of open, complete nonpositively curved manifolds which may have infinite volume. Topics include topology of ends, restrictions on the fundamental group, as well as a review of known examples.
We study algebraic conditions on a group G under which every properly discontinuous, isometric G-action on a Hadamard manifold has a G-invariant Busemann function. For such G we prove the following structure theorem: every open complete nonpositively curved Riemannian K(G,1) manifold that is homotopy equivalent to a finite complex of codimension >2 is an open regular neighborhood of a subcomplex of the same codimension. In this setting we show that each tangential homotopy type contains infinitely many open K(G,1) manifolds that admit no complete nonpositively curved metric even though their universal cover is the Euclidean space. A sample application is that an open contractible manifold W is homeomorphic to a Euclidean space if and only if the product of W and a circle admits a complete Riemannian metric of nonpositive curvature.
We study rays in von Mangoldt planes, which has applications to the structure of open complete manifolds with lower radial curvature bounds. We prove that the set of souls of any rotationally symmetric plane of nonnegative curvature is a closed ball, and if the plane is von Mangoldt, we compute the radius of the ball. We show that each cone in the Euclidean 3-space can be smoothed to a von Mangoldt plane.
We show that certain aspherical manifolds arising from hyperplane arrangements in negatively curved manifolds have relatively hyperbolic fundamental group.
For n>3 we study spaces obtained from finite volume complete real hyperbolic n-manifolds by removing a compact totally geodesic submanifold of codimension two. We prove that their fundamental groups are relative hyperbolic, co-Hopf, biautomatic, residually hyperbolic, not Kähler, not isomorphic to lattices in virtually connected real Lie groups, have no nontrivial subgroups with property (T), have finite outer automorphism groups, satisfy Mostow-type Rigidity, have finite asymptotic dimension and rapid decay property, and satisfy Baum-Connes conjecture. We also characterize those lattices in real Lie groups that are isomorphic to relatively hyperbolic groups.
We study spaces obtained from a complete finite volume complex hyperbolic n-manifold M by removing a compact totally geodesic complex (n-1)-submanifold. The main result is that the fundamental group of M-S is relatively hyperbolic, relative to fundamental groups of the ends of M-S, and M-S admits a complete finite volume A-regular Riemannian metric of negative sectional curvature. It follows that for n>1 the fundamental group of M-S satisfies Mostow-type Rigidity, has finite asymptotic dimension and rapid decay property, satisfies Borel and Baum-Connes conjectures, is co-Hopf and residually hyperbolic, has no nontrivial subgroups with property (T), and has finite outer automorphism group. Furthermore, if M is compact, then the fundamental group of M-S is biautomatic and satisfies Strong Tits Alternative.
We construct new examples of manifolds of positive Ricci curvature which, topologically, are vector bundles over compact manifolds of almost nonnegative Ricci curvature. In particular, we prove that if E is the total space of a vector bundle over a compact manifold of nonnegative Ricci curvature, then the product of E and R^p admits a complete metric of positive Ricci curvature for all large p.
We give a diffeomorphism classification of pinched negatively curved manifolds with amenable fundamental groups, namely, they are precisely the Möbius band, and the products of a line with the total spaces of flat vector bundles over closed infranilmanifolds.
Let $M$ be a complete Riemannian metric of sectional curvature within $[-a^2,-1]$ whose fundamental group contains a $k$-step nilpotent subgroup of finite index. We prove that $a\ge k$ answering a question of M. Gromov. Furthermore, we show that for any $ε>0$, the manifold $M$ admits a complete Riemannian metric of sectional curvature within $[-(k+ε)^2,-1]$.
This paper contains examples of closed aspherical manifolds obtained as a by-product of recent work by the author [arXiv:math.GR/0509490] on the relative strict hyperbolization of polyhedra. The following is proved. (I) Any closed aspherical triangulated n-manifold M^n with hyperbolic fundamental group is a retract of a closed aspherical triangulated (n+1)-manifold N^(n+1) with hyperbolic fundamental group. (II) If B_1,...,B_m are closed aspherical triangulated n-manifolds, then there is a closed aspherical triangulated manifold N of dimension n+1 such that N has nonzero simplicial volume, N retracts to each B_k, and π_1(N) is hyperbolic relative to π_1(B_k)'s. (III) Any finite aspherical simplicial complex is a retract of a closed aspherical triangulated manifold with positive simplicial volume and non-elementary relatively hyperbolic fundamental group.
We show that the aspherical manifolds produced via the relative strict hyperbolization of polyhedra enjoy many group-theoretic and topological properties of open finite volume negatively pinched manifolds, including relative hyperbolicity, nonvanishing of simplicial volume, co-Hopf property, finiteness of outer automorphism group, absence of splitting over elementary subgroups, and acylindricity. In fact, some of these properties hold for any compact aspherical manifold with incompressible aspherical boundary components, provided the fundamental group is hyperbolic relative to fundamental groups of boundary components. We also show that no manifold obtained via the relative strict hyperbolization can be embedded into a compact Kaehler manifold of the same dimension, except when the dimension is two.
We show that for any non--elementary hyperbolic group $H$ and any finitely presented group $Q$, there exists a short exact sequence $1\to N\to G\to Q\to 1$, where $G$ is a hyperbolic group and $N$ is a quotient group of $H$. As an application we construct a hyperbolic group that has the same $n$--dimensional complex representations as a given finitely generated group, show that adding relations of the form $x^n=1$ to a presentation of a hyperbolic group may drastically change the group even in case $n>> 1$, and prove that some properties (e.g. properties (T) and FA) are not recursively recognizable in the class of hyperbolic groups. A relatively hyperbolic version of this theorem is also used to generalize results of Ollivier--Wise on outer automorphism groups of Kazhdan groups.
We generalize some results of Paulin and Rips-Sela on endomorphisms of hyperbolic groups to relatively hyperbolic groups, and in particular prove the following. (1) If G is a finitely generated non-elementary relatively hyperbolic group with slender parabolic subgroups, and either G is not co-Hopfian or Out(G) is infinite, then G splits over a slender group. (2) If a finitely generated non-parabolic subgroup H of a non-elementary relatively hyperbolic group is not Hopfian, then H acts non-trivially on an R-tree. (3) Every non-elementary relatively hyperbolic group has a non-elementary relatively hyperbolic quotient that is Hopfian. (4) Any finitely presented group is isomorphic to a finite index subgroup of Out(H) for some Kazhdan group H. (This sharpens a result of Ollivier-Wise).
This is an expositiry article on collapsing theory in Riemannian geometry written for the Modern Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics (MEMPhys). We focus on describing the geometric and topological structure of collapsed/non-collapsed regions in Riemannian manifold under various curvature assumptions. Numerous applications of collapsing theory to Riemannian geometry are NOT discussed in this survey.
We characterize co-Hopfian finitely generated torsion free nilpotent groups in terms of their Lie algebra automorphisms, and construct many examples of such groups.
We prove a result on equivariant deformations of flat bundles, and as a corollary, we obtain two ``splitting in a finite cover'' theorems for isometric group actions on Riemannian manifolds with infinite fundamental groups, where the manifolds are either compact of nonnegative Ricci curvature, or complete of nonnegative sectional curvature.
We construct the first examples of manifolds, the simplest one being the product of S^3, S^4, and R^5, which admit infinitely many complete nonnegatively curved metrics with pairwise nonhomeomorphic souls.