Geodesic flow for CAT(0)-groups (Q441118)

From the earlier proofs of the rigidity conjectures in geometric topology (Novikov conjecture, Borel conjecture and, the most general, Farrell-Jones isomorphism conjecture) for the fundamental groups of non-positively curved manifolds, it was obvious that the dynamics of the geodesic flow on the sphere bundle of the manifold played a crucial role (for example, [\textit{F. T. Farrell} and \textit{L. E. Jones}, J. Differ. Geom. 34, No. 3, 769--834 (1991; Zbl 0749.53022)]). That suggested that the proof of the isomorphism conjecture for more general groups would depend on some special dynamics of the group action to an analogue of the flow space. This idea was carried out, very successfully, for hyperbolic groups [the authors and \textit{H. Reich}, Invent. Math. 172, No. 1, 29--70 (2008; Zbl 1143.19003)]. In the paper under review, the authors prove the corresponding dynamical results for CAT(0)-groups, i.e., groups that acts properly, cocompactly, by isometries on a finite dimensional CAT(0)-space \(X\). The geodesic flow is defined now on the flow space \(FS(X)\) of \(X\), which is the space of all generalized geodesics on \(X\), continuous maps that are isometries in an open interval and it is locally constant outside that interval. The flow is defined in the usual way (by translation) on \(FS(X)\). In the paper, there is an explicit comparison of the flow space \(FS(X)\) with the geodesic flow on the sphere bundle when \(X\) is a complete Riemannian manifold with nonpositive curvature. The paper is split into three parts. In the first part, the general properties of the space \(FS(X)\), for any metric space \(X\), are studied. It is proved that \(FS(X)\) is a metric space and its metric topology coincides with the topology of uniform convergence on compact subsets. Also, it is proved that, if \(G\) acts by isometries on \(X\), then it acts by isometries on \(FS(X)\). Furthermore, if the \(G\) action on \(X\) is cocompact, then the \(G\)-action on \(FS(X)\) is also cocompact. The second part is on the properties of \(FS(X)\) when \(X\) is a CAT(0)-space. First of all, the complement of the constant geodesics is embedded into a product of \(X\) with two copies of the compactification of \(X\) with the cone topology, and two copies of the the two-point compactification of \(\mathbb{R}\). That is used to give estimates of the dimension of \(FS(X)\) in terms of the dimension of \(X\) and determine other topological properties of \(FS(X)\), as, for example, that the complement of the constant maps is locally connected. Also, for \(S\) a finite subset of \(G\) that contains the identity, a homotopy \(S\)-action is defined on the closed balls of \(X\). The basic result of this section is an estimate that was given for the flow on generalized geodesics in connection with the \(S\)-action on \(X\). Using the properties of isometries of \(X\) (especially the hyperbolic isometries) it is proved that there is an open virtually-cyclic cover of \(FS(X)\) that is \(G\)-invariant, with finite \(G\)-orbit, of finite dimension so that the \(\varepsilon\)-neighborhoods of the flow of periodic generalized geodesics are contained in some element of the cover. It has to be noticed the the virtually cyclic subgroups of \(G\) appear as the isometries of the axis of the hyperbolic elements. The next result on the dynamics of the flow is that \(FS(X)\), for \(S \subset G\) as before, admits long virtually-cyclic covers at infinity and periodic flow lines and, also, it admits contracting transfers. The first notion means that, for each \({\gamma} > 0\) there is a \(G\)-invariant virtually-cyclic cover, whose dimension is bounded by a fixed number so that, if \(K \subset FS(X)\) is a compact subset whose \(G\)-orbit contains a generalized geodesic of period \(\leq {\gamma}\), the \(\varepsilon\)-neighborhood of the geodesic flows of elements in the complement of the \(G\)-orbit of \(K\), for time in \([-{\gamma}, {\gamma}]\), are contained in an element of the cover. Also, roughly, we say that \(FS(X)\) admits contracting transfers if there is a controlled finitely dominated space \(Y\) with a bound on the dimension which admits a homotopy \(S\)-action and an equivariant map \(G{\times} Y \to FS(X)\) so that the distances between of the flows of the images and the flows of their translates is bounded. In the case when \(X\) is a cocompact \(G\)-space, the space \(Y = \bar{B}_R(x_0)\). That is included in the third part of the paper, where cocompact actions on CAT(0)-spaces are considered. The last result on the geodesic flow is the analogue needed for the proof of the isomorphism conjecture of groups that act cocompactly and by isometries on a CAT(0)-space.