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Stefano Riolo

Publications and source records attributed to Stefano Riolo.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Convex projective manifolds, symmetric spaces and geometric decompositions

We prove that if a closed, indecomposable, properly convex real projective $4$-manifold is geometric or admits a geometric decomposition in the sense of Thurston, then every piece is real hyperbolic. This extends a theorem of Benoist to dimension four. Moreover, we build orientable (non-hyperbolic) $4$-manifolds of the above type, with arbitrary positive, even, Euler characteristic. Finally, we characterise the compact locally symmetric spaces that virtually support properly convex real projective structures in terms of their geometry.

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arXiv2026

Stably tangential strict hyperbolization

We show that the Charney--Davis strict hyperbolization procedure can preserve stable tangent bundles, answering a question of Charney and Davis. The key input is the construction of many hyperbolizing pieces, obtained using separability properties of hyperbolic cubulable groups. Moreover, these pieces may be chosen so that every face is connected, answering a question of Belegradek. We then apply this construction to suitable cubulations of flat manifolds to produce infinitely many commensurability classes of closed hyperbolic manifolds, both arithmetic and non-arithmetic, with diverse topological features. In particular, we obtain the first examples in which all the Stiefel--Whitney classes are non-trivial below the top degree, and the first orientable examples with non-trivial Pontryagin classes. We also construct infinite towers of finite covers of closed hyperbolic manifolds in which no cover is stably parallelizable or spin. Our methods further yield new pairs of exotic negatively curved Riemannian manifolds.

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arXiv2023

A small cusped hyperbolic 4-manifold

By gluing some copies of a polytope of Kerckhoff and Storm's, we build the smallest known orientable hyperbolic 4-manifold that is not commensurable with the ideal 24-cell or the ideal rectified simplex. It is cusped and arithemtic, and has twice the minimal volume.

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arXiv2022

Embedding non-arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds

This paper shows that many hyperbolic manifolds obtained by glueing arithmetic pieces embed into higher-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds as codimension-one totally geodesic submanifolds. As a consequence, many Gromov--Pyatetski-Shapiro and Agol--Belolipetsky--Thomson non-arithmetic manifolds embed geodesically. Moreover, we show that the number of commensurability classes of hyperbolic manifolds with a representative of volume $\leq v$ that bounds geometrically is at least $v^{Cv}$, for $v$ large enough.

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arXiv2022

The signature of cusped hyperbolic 4-manifolds

In this note we show that every integer is the signature of a non-compact, oriented, hyperbolic 4-manifold of finite volume, and give some partial results on the geography of such manifolds. The main ingredients are a theorem of Long and Reid, and the explicit construction of a hyperbolic 24-cell manifold with some special topological properties.

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arXiv2022

Geometric transition from hyperbolic to anti-de Sitter structures in dimension four

We provide the first examples of geometric transition from hyperbolic to anti-de Sitter structures in dimension four, in a fashion similar to Danciger's three-dimensional examples. The main ingredient is a deformation of hyperbolic 4-polytopes, discovered by Kerckhoff and Storm, eventually collapsing to a 3-dimensional ideal cuboctahedron. We show the existence of a similar family of collapsing anti-de Sitter polytopes, and join the two deformations by means of an opportune half-pipe orbifold structure. The desired examples of geometric transition are then obtained by gluing copies of the polytope.

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arXiv2021

Character varieties of a transitioning Coxeter 4-orbifold

In 2010, Kerckhoff and Storm discovered a path of hyperbolic 4-polytopes eventually collapsing to an ideal right-angled cuboctahedron. This is expressed by a deformation of the inclusion of a discrete reflection group (a right-angled Coxeter group) in the isometry group of hyperbolic 4-space. More recently, we have shown that the path of polytopes can be extended to Anti-de Sitter geometry so as to have geometric transition on a naturally associated 4-orbifold, via a transitional half-pipe structure. In this paper, we study the hyperbolic, Anti-de Sitter, and half-pipe character varieties of Kerckhoff and Storm's right-angled Coxeter group near each of the found holonomy representations, including a description of the singularity that appears at the collapse. An essential tool is the study of some rigidity properties of right-angled cusp groups in dimension four.

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arXiv2021

A small closed convex projective 4-manifold via Dehn filling

In order to obtain a closed orientable convex projective four-manifold with small positive Euler characteristic, we build an explicit example of convex projective Dehn filling of a cusped hyperbolic four-manifold through a continuous path of projective cone-manifolds.

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arXiv2020

Convex plumbings in closed hyperbolic 4-manifolds

We show that every plumbing of disc bundles over surfaces whose genera satisfy a simple inequality may be embedded as a convex submanifold in some closed hyperbolic four-manifold. In particular its interior has a geometrically finite hyperbolic structure that covers a closed hyperbolic four-manifold.

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arXiv2020

Compact hyperbolic manifolds without spin structures

We exhibit the first examples of compact orientable hyperbolic manifolds that do not have any spin structure. We show that such manifolds exist in all dimensions $n \geq 4$. The core of the argument is the construction of a compact orientable hyperbolic $4$-manifold $M$ that contains a surface $S$ of genus $3$ with self intersection $1$. The $4$-manifold $M$ has an odd intersection form and is hence not spin. It is built by carefully assembling some right angled $120$-cells along a pattern inspired by the minimum trisection of $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^2$. The manifold $M$ is also the first example of a compact orientable hyperbolic $4$-manifold satisfying any of these conditions: 1) $H_2(M,\mathbb{Z})$ is not generated by geodesically immersed surfaces. 2) There is a covering $\tilde{M}$ that is a non-trivial bundle over a compact surface.

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arXiv2019

New hyperbolic 4-manifolds of low volume

We prove that there are at least 2 commensurability classes of minimal-volume hyperbolic 4-manifolds. Moreover, by applying a well-known technique due to Gromov and Piatetski-Shapiro, we build the smallest known non-arithmetic hyperbolic 4-manifold.

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arXiv2019

Many cusped hyperbolic 3-manifolds do not bound geometrically

In this note, we show that there exist cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifolds that embed geodesically, but cannot bound geometrically. Thus, being a geometric boundary is a non-trivial property for such manifolds. Our result complements the work by Long and Reid on geometric boundaries of compact hyperbolic $4$-manifolds, and by Kolpakov, Reid and Slavich on embedding arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds.

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arXiv2017

Hyperbolic Dehn filling in dimension four

We introduce and study some deformations of complete finite-volume hyperbolic four-manifolds that may be interpreted as four-dimensional analogues of Thurston's hyperbolic Dehn filling. We construct in particular an analytic path of complete, finite-volume cone four-manifolds $M_t$ that interpolates between two hyperbolic four-manifolds $M_0$ and $M_1$ with the same volume $\frac {8}3π^2$. The deformation looks like the familiar hyperbolic Dehn filling paths that occur in dimension three, where the cone angle of a core simple closed geodesic varies monotonically from $0$ to $2π$. Here, the singularity of $M_t$ is an immersed geodesic surface whose cone angles also vary monotonically from $0$ to $2π$. When a cone angle tends to $0$ a small core surface (a torus or Klein bottle) is drilled producing a new cusp. We show that various instances of hyperbolic Dehn fillings may arise, including one case where a degeneration occurs when the cone angles tend to $2π$, like in the famous figure-eight knot complement example. The construction makes an essential use of a family of four-dimensional deforming hyperbolic polytopes recently discovered by Kerckhoff and Storm.

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arXiv2015

Spines of minimal length

In this paper we raise the question whether every closed Riemannian manifold has a spine of minimal area, and we answer it affirmatively in the surface case. On constant curvature surfaces we introduce the spine systole, a continuous real function on moduli space that measures the minimal length of a spine in each surface. We show that the spine systole is a proper function and has its global minima precisely on the extremal surfaces (those containing the biggest possible discs). We also study minimal spines, which are critical points for the length functional. We completely classify minimal spines on flat tori, proving that the number of them is a proper function on moduli space. We also show that the number of minimal spines of uniformly bounded length is finite on hyperbolic surfaces.

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