Hyperbolic 4-manifolds and conformally flat 3-manifolds (Q583662)

The authors discover complete hyperbolic manifold structures on non- trivial plane bundles \(E\to \Sigma\) over an oriented closed surface \(\Sigma\) and uniformized conformal structures (that is, conformally flat structures) on the corresponding non-trivial circle bundles over \(\Sigma\). All these bundles satisfy the inequality \(| \chi (E)| \leq | \chi (\Sigma)|\), and the authors conjecture that it is a necessary condition for the existence of such structures. The authors' method is based on some construction of discrete groups \(G\subset SO(4,1)\) which have as their limit sets embedded circles \(\Lambda (G)\subset S^ 3\). For the first time, related constructions of ``wild'' limit curves were contained in the reviewer's paper ``Kleinian groups, Teichmüller space and Mostow's rigidity theorem'' [Sib. Mat. Zh. 21, No.4, 3-15 (1980; Zbl 0499.30032)] and in \textit{B. Maskit}'s book ``Kleinian groups'' (1988; Zbl 0627.30039). For their generalizations see Ch. 9, {\S} 5 of the reviewer's book ``The geometry of discrete groups in space and uniformization problems'' (Kluwer Acad. Publ. (Math. and Appl. 40), Dordrecht, 1990) and \textit{N. Kuiper}'s paper reviewed below (see Zbl 0692.57013).