Restrictions on the geometry at infinity of nonnegatively curved manifolds (Q1902010)

The structure of noncompact manifolds \(M_n\) of nonnegative sectional curvature was studied by Cheeger, Gromoll and Meyer, mainly using the notion of the soul of \(M_n\). Later on, Gromoll introduced an analogue of ideal boundaries and showed several consequences, proving that the metric property of the space \(M(\infty)\) at infinity can be retained in \(M_n\). A new motivation for the study of the subject is its relation to collapsing problems under a lower curvature bound. Here, a convergent sequence of manifolds is said to be collapsing if its limit has dimension smaller than \(n\). This limit is known to be a Alexandrov space. Thus it can be concluded that \(M(\infty)\) should be such a space with curvature bounded below 1. Under these circumstances the authors now present their main Lemma: Let \(M_n\) be an open complete Riemannian manifold of nonnegative curvature. If its ideal boundary is a connected Riemannian manifold, there exists a locally trivial fibration \(f: S^k\to M(\infty)\), where \(k= n-\dim S- 1\). This lemma serves for proving the Theorem: There are Alexandrov spaces of positive curvature that never show up as ideal boundaries of nonnegatively curved manifolds. These results are of importance for the general problem of collapsing, related to which an exciting conjecture is presented.