On the fundamental group of a visibility manifold (Q1078824)

A theorem of \textit{P. Eberlein} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 268, 411-443 (1981; Zbl 0526.53045)] about compact Riemannian manifolds M of nonpositive curvature strongly suggests that the visibility property of M is equivalent to a purely algebraic property of the fundamental group \(\pi_ 1(M)\). The author proves that this is indeed the case: Theorem. M is a visibility manifold, iff there is no map \(f: {\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{Z}}\to \pi_ 1(M)\) such that \[ A^{-1}\cdot \| x- y\| \leq d(f(x),f(y))\leq A\cdot \| x-y\| \] for a constant \(A>1\) and all x,y\(\in {\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{Z}}\). Here \(\| \cdot \|\) is the standard Euclidean norm on \({\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{Z}}\subset {\mathbb{R}}^ 2\) and d(*,*) is the word metric on \(\pi_ 1(M).\) This theorem is a weaker version of a conjecture of \textit{K. Burns} and \textit{A. Katok} [sect. 6 of ''Manifolds of nonpositive curvature'', in Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 5, 307-317 (1985; Zbl 0572.58019)] that M is a visibility manifold iff \(\pi_ 1(M)\) does not contain a subgroup \({\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{Z}}\) or, equivalently, that a map f from the Theorem with the properties above is a homomorphism.