The intrinsic flat distance between Riemannian manifolds and other integral current spaces (Q542368)

Motivated by Gromov's idea of intrinsic Hausdorff distance, the authors define what is called the intrinsic flat distance between oriented \(m\)-Riemannian manifolds with boundary. A compact oriented Riemannian manifold with boundary is considered as a metric space with an integral current defined by integration, and the integral current structure is used to define the intrinsic flat distance, \(d_\mathcal{F}\), between two such submanifolds. In fact, \(d_\mathcal{F}\) is defined by isometrically embedding the manifolds into a common metric space, measuring the flat distance between them by using the \(m\)-dimensional integral currents induced by the embedding, and taking the infimum over all isometric embeddings and all common metric spaces. Here, an isometric embedding is to be understood in Gromov's sense, i.e., as an immersion which preserves not only the Riemannian metric but also the distance. An essential ingredient for this paper is the work by \textit{L. Ambrosio} and \textit{B. Kirchheim} in [``Currents in metric spaces'', Acta Math. 185, No.~1, 1--80 (2000; Zbl 0984.49025)], where the theory of currents on arbitrary metric spaces is developed. After revising the basic notions and tools in \S 2, the authors explore in \S 3 the properties of the intrinsic flat distance \(d_\mathcal{F}\). They prove that \(d_\mathcal{F}\) is a distance on the space of precompact integral current spaces. In particular, for compact oriented Riemannian manifolds \(M\) and \(N\), \(d_\mathcal{F}(M,N) = 0\) if and only if there is an orientation-preserving isometry from \(M\) to \(N\). They also prove that, when a sequence of Riemannian manifolds has volume uniformly bounded above and converges in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense (GH-sense) to a compact metric space \(Y\), then it has a subsequence which converges to an integral current space \(X \subset Y\). However, the intrinsic flat limit and the GH-limit need not agree. Moreover, although GH-limits of Riemannian manifolds are geodesic spaces, the authors show that the intrinsic flat limit of Riemannian manifolds need not be a geodesic space and that they are countably \(\mathcal{H}^m\)-rectifiable metric spaces of the same dimension. In addition, the authors give conditions under which a sequence of Riemannian manifolds converges in the intrinsic flat sense to the zero integral current space, emerging under this situation to what they call collapsing sequences and the cancellation effect. In \S 4 the authors study properties of intrinsic flat convergence. For instance, they prove that converging and Cauchy sequences embed into a common metric space what allows them to extend properties of weakly converging sequences of integral currents to integral current spaces. It has been proven recently by the authors that, if the members of a sequence have nonnegative Ricci curvature, the intrinsic flat limits and GH-limits agree. In this sense, one may think of intrinsic flat convergence as a means of extending to a larger class of manifolds the rectifiability properties already proven by Cheeger-Colding to hold on GH-limits of non-collapsing sequences of such manifolds [\textit{J. Cheeger} and \textit{T. H. Colding}, ``On the structure of spaces with Ricci curvature bounded below. I'', J. Differ. Geom. 46, No.~3, 406--480 (1997; Zbl 0902.53034)]. In \S 5, the authors focus on the relationship between the intrinsic flat convergence of Riemannian manifolds and other forms of convergence, including \(C^\infty\)-convergence, \(C^{k,\alpha}\)-convergence, and Gromov's Lipschitz convergence. The appendix is due to the first author, and explicitly analyzes many examples of sequences proving their convergence to their limits. Besides its mathematical achievements, this is a very well-written paper which the authors try to make accessible to an ample spectrum of readers by providing historical and theoretical background, a guide to the basic references, a bunch of clarifying remarks and comments putting the results in the appropriate context, and many illuminating examples.