We construct series of examples of exotic smooth structures on compact locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type. In particular, we obtain higher rank examples, which do not support Riemannian metric of nonpositive curvature. The examples are obtained by taking the connected sum with an exotic sphere. To detect the change of the smooth structure we use a tangential map from the locally symmetric space its dual compact type twin.
We give a simple construction of new, complete, finite volume manifolds $M$ of bounded, nonpositive curvature. These manifolds have ends that look like a mixture of locally symmetric ends of different ranks and their fundamental groups are not duality groups.
We use pinched smooth hyperbolization to show that every closed, nonpositively curved $n$-dimensional manifold $M$ can be embedded as a totally geodesic submanifold of a closed, nonpositively curved $(n+1)$-dimensional manifold $\hat{M}$ of geometric rank one.
We relate the Gromov norm on homology classes to the harmonic norm on the dual cohomology and obtain double sided bounds in terms of the volume and other geometric quantities of the underlying manifold. Along the way, we provide comparisons to other related norms and quantities as well.
We show that closed manifolds supporting a nonpositively curved metric with negative $([\frac{n}{4}]+1)$-Ricci curvature, have positive simplicial volume. This answers a special case of a conjecture of Gromov.
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.
Isoperimetric regions minimize the size of their boundaries among all regions with the same volume. In Euclidean and Hyperbolic space, isoperimetric regions are round balls. We show that isoperimetric regions in two and three-dimensional nonpositively curved manifolds are not necessarily balls, and need not even be connected.
We show that the metric of nonpositively curved graph manifolds is determined by its geodesic flow. More precisely we show that if the geodesic flows of two nonpositively curved graph manifolds are $C^0$ conjugate then the spaces are isometric.
An old problem asks whether a Riemannian manifold can be isospectral to a Riemannian orbifold with nontrivial singular set. In this short note we show that under the assumption of Schanuel's conjecture in transcendental number theory, this is impossible whenever the orbifold and manifold in question are length-commensurable compact locally symmetric spaces of nonpositive curvature associated to simple Lie groups.
Let M be a closed 3-dimensional graph manifold. We prove that h(g)>1 for each geometrization g of M, where h(g) is the topological entropy of geodesic flow of g.
We prove a pair of sharp reverse isoperimetric inequalities for domains in nonpositively curved surfaces: (1) metric disks centered at the vertex of a Euclidean cone of angle at least $2π$ have minimal area among all nonpositively curved disks of the same perimeter and the same total curvature; (2) geodesic triangles in a Euclidean (resp. hyperbolic) cone of angle at least $2π$ have minimal area among all nonpositively curved geodesic triangles (resp. all geodesic triangles of curvature at most $-1$) with the same side lengths and angles.
We prove vanishing results for the generalized Miller-Morita-Mumford classes of some smooth bundles whose fiber is a closed manifold that supports a nonpositively curved Riemannian metric. We also find, under some extra conditions, that the vertical tangent bundle is topologically rigid.
We give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible 2-tori sufficiently complicated to force branching of geodesics for nonpositively curved metrics.
We prove the nonexistence of a proper singular Riemannian foliation admitting section in compact manifolds of nonpositive curvature. Then we give a global description of proper singular Riemannian foliations admitting sections on Hadamard manifolds. In addition by using the theory of taut immersions we provide a short proof of this result in the special case of a polar action.
We study the asymptotic cones of the universal covering spaces of closed 4-dimensional nonpositively curved real analytic manifolds. We show that the existence of nonstandard components in the Tits boundary, discovered by Christoph Hummel and Victor Schroeder, depends only on the quasi-isometry type of the fundamental group.
Let X be a Hadamard manifold and $Γ$ a discrete group of isometries of X which contains an axial isometry without invariant flat half plane. We study the behavior of conformal densities on the geometric limit set of $Γ$ in order to derive a new asymptotic estimate for the growth rate of closed geodesics in not necessarily compact or finite volume manifolds.
We study discrete, cocompact, isometric actions of groups on Hadamard spaces, and the induced actions on ideal boundaries. For a class of groups generalizing fundamental groups of three-dimensional graph manifolds, we find a set of invariants for the action which determine the boundary action up to equivariant homeomorphism. This work was inspired by (and answers) a question of Gromov from "Asymptotic invariants of infinite groups."
Let (M,g) be a simply connected complete Kahler manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature. Assume that g has constant negative holomorphic sectional curvature outside a compact set. We prove that M is then biholomorphic to the unit ball in C^n, where dim M = n.
We study complete, finite volume $n$-manifolds $M$ of bounded nonpositive sectional curvature. A classical theorem of Gromov says that if such $M$ has negative curvature then it is homeomorphic to the interior of a compact manifold-with-boundary, and we denote this boundary $\partial M$. If $n\geq 3$, we prove that the universal cover of the boundary $\widetilde{\partial M}$ and also the $π_1M$-cover of the boundary $\partial\widetilde M$ have vanishing $(n-2)$-dimensional homology. For $n=4$ the first of these recovers a result of Nguyen Phan saying that each component of the boundary $\parti…
The measure concentration property of an mm-space $X$ is roughly described as that any 1-Lipschitz map on $X$ to a metric space $Y$ is almost close to a constant map. The target space $Y$ is called the screen. The case of $Y=\mathbb{R}$ is widely studied in many literature (see \cite{gromov}, \cite{ledoux}, \cite{mil2}, \cite{milsch}, \cite{sch}, \cite{tal}, \cite{tal2} and its reference). M. Gromov developed the theory of measure concentration in the case where the screen $Y$ is not necessarily $\mathbb{R}$ (cf. \cite{gromovcat}, {gromov2}, \cite{gromov}). In this paper, we consider the case …
We study the generic invariant probability measures for the geodesic flow on connected complete nonpositively curved manifolds. Under a mild technical assumption, we prove that ergodicity is a generic property in the set of probability measures defined on the unit tangent bundle of the manifold and supported by trajectories not bounding a flat strip. This is done by showing that Dirac measures on periodic orbits are dense in that set. In the case of a compact surface, we get the following sharp result: ergod- icity is a generic property in the space of all invariant measures defined on the uni…
We show that a compact Riemannian $3$-manifold $M$ with strictly convex simply connected boundary and sectional curvature $K\leq a\leq 0$ is isometric to a convex domain in a complete simply connected space of constant curvature $a$, provided that $K\equiv a$ on planes tangent to the boundary of $M$. This yields a characterization of strictly convex surfaces with minimal total curvature in Cartan-Hadamard $3$-manifolds, and extends some rigidity results of Greene-Wu, Gromov, and Schroeder-Strake. Our proof is based on a recent comparison formula for total curvature of Riemannian hypersurfaces,…
The regularity of systolically extremal surfaces is a notoriously difficult problem already discussed by M. Gromov in 1983, who proposed an argument toward the existence of $L^2$-extremizers exploiting the theory of $r$-regularity developed by P. A. White and others by the 1950s. We propose to study the problem of systolically extremal metrics in the context of generalized metrics of nonpositive curvature. A natural approach would be to work in the class of Alexandrov surfaces of finite total curvature, where one can exploit the tools of the completion provided in the context of Radon measures…
The Teichmüller harmonic map flow deforms both a map from an oriented closed surface $M$ into an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold, and a constant curvature metric on $M$, so as to reduce the energy of the map as quickly as possible [16]. The flow then tries to converge to a branched minimal immersion when it can [16,18]. The only thing that can stop the flow is a finite-time degeneration of the metric on $M$ where one or more collars are pinched. In this paper we show that finite-time degeneration cannot happen in the case that the target has nonpositive sectional curvature, and indeed mor…
In this paper we give a natural condition for when a volumorphism on a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ is actually an isometry with respect to some other, optimal, Riemannian metric $h$. We consider the natural action of volumorphisms on the space $\M_μ^s$ of all Riemannian metrics of Sobolev class $H^s$, $s>n/2$, with a fixed volume form $μ$. An optimal Riemannian metric, for a given volumorphism, is a fixed point of this action in a certain complete metric space containing $\M_μ^s$ as an isometrically embedded subset. We show that a fixed point exists if the orbit of the action is bounded. We al…
We define \emph{piecewise rank 1} manifolds, which are aspherical manifolds that generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric, nonpositively curved manifolds with $π_1$-injective cusps. We prove smooth (self) rigidity for this class of manifolds in the case where the gluing preserves the cusps' homogeneous structure. We compute the group of self homotopy equivalences of such a manifold and show that it can contain a normal free abelian subgroup and thus, can be infinite. Elements o…
In this paper we study the metric geometry of the space $Σ$ of positive invertible elements of a von Neumann algebra ${\mathcal A}$ with a finite, normal and faithful tracial state $τ$. The trace induces an incomplete Riemannian metric $<x,y>_a=τ(ya^{-1}xa^{-1})$, and though the techniques involved are quite different, the situation here resembles in many relevant aspects that of the $n\times n$ matrices when they are regarded as a symmetric space. For instance we prove that geodesics are the shortest paths for the metric induced, and that the geodesic distance is a convex function; we give an…
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 u…
We show that every closed nonpositively curved manifold with non-trivial volume flux group has zero minimal volume, and admits a finite covering with circle actions whose orbits are homologically essential. This proves a conjecture of Kedra-Kotschick-Morita for this class of manifolds.
We study Lord Rayleigh's problem for clamped plates on an arbitrary $n$-dimensional $(n\geq 2)$ Cartan-Hadamard manifold $(M,g)$ with sectional curvature $\textbf{K}\leq -κ^2$ for some $κ\geq 0.$ We first prove a McKean-type spectral gap estimate, i.e. the fundamental tone of any domain in $(M,g)$ is universally bounded from below by $\frac{(n-1)^4}{16}κ^4$ whenever the $κ$-Cartan-Hadamard conjecture holds on $(M,g)$, e.g. in 2- and 3-dimensions due to Bol (1941) and Kleiner (1992), respectively. In 2- and 3-dimensions we prove sharp isoperimetric inequalities for sufficiently small clamped pl…
We define cusp-decomposable manifolds and prove smooth rigidity within this class of manifolds. These manifolds generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, locally symmetric, negatively curved manifolds with cusps. We prove that the group of outer automorphisms of the fundamental group of such a manifold is an extension of an abelian group by a finite group. Elements of the abelian group are induced by diffeomorphisms that are analogous to Dehn twists in surface topology. We also prove that the outer automophis…
In this paper we prove that the space of flat metrics (nonpositively curved Euclidean cone metrics) on a closed, oriented surface is marked length spectrally rigid. In other words, two flat metrics assigning the same lengths to all closed curves differ by an isometry isotopic to the identity. The novel proof suggests a stronger rigidity result for flat metrics.
In this article, we generalize Eberlein's Rigidity Theorem to the singular case, namely, one of the spaces is only assumed to be a CAT(0) topological manifold. As a corollary, we get that any compact irreducible but locally reducible locally symmetric space of noncompact type does not admit a nonpositively curved (in the Aleksandrov sense) piecewise Euclidean structure. Any hyperbolic manifold, on the other hand, does admit such a structure.
This paper was withdrawn by the author due to an error in the proof of the main result; essentially the parameter R used in the proof may depend on the manifold (M, g), not just on dimension and pinching constant.
In this survey we review some results concerning negatively curved exotic strucutres (DIFF and PL) and its (unexpected) implications on the limitations of some analytic methods in geometry. This article is dedicated to the memory of Armand Borel.
We show that the moduli space of nonnegatively curved metrics on each member of a large class of 2-connected 7-manifolds, including each smooth manifold homeomorphic to $S^7$, has infinitely many connected components. The components are distinguished using the Kreck-Stolz $s$-invariant computed for metrics constructed by Goette, Kerin and Shankar. The invariant is computed by extending each metric to the total space of an orbifold disc bundle and applying generalizations of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem for orbifolds with boundary. We develop methods for computing characteristic class…
Any nonpositively curved symmetric space admits a topological compactification, namely the Hadamard compactification. For rank one spaces, this topological compactification can be endowed with a differentiable structure such that the action of the isometry group is differentiable. Moreover, the restriction of the action on the boundary leads to a flat model for some geometry (conformal, CR or quaternionic CR depending of the space). One can ask whether such a differentiable compactification exists for higher rank spaces, hopefully leading to some knew geometry to explore. In this paper we answ…
Given a metric space X, one defines its Wasserstein space W2(X) as a set of sufficiently decaying probability measures on X endowed with a metric defined from optimal transportation. In this article, we continue the geometric study of W2(X) when X is a simply connected, nonpositively curved metric spaces by considering its isometry group. When X is Euclidean, the second named author proved that this isometry group is larger than the isometry group of X. In contrast, we prove here a rigidity result: when X is negatively curved, any isometry of W2(X) comes from an isometry of X.
We prove a Morse Lemma for coarsely regular quasigeodesics in nonpositively curved symmetric spaces and euclidean buildings X. The main application is a simpler coarse geometric characterization of Morse subgroups of the isometry groups Isom(X) as undistorted subgroups which are coarsely uniformly regular. We show furthermore that they must be word hyperbolic. We introduced this class of discrete subgroups in our earlier paper, in the context of symmetric spaces, where various equivalent geometric and dynamical characterizations of word hyperbolic Morse subgroups were established, including th…
