Small excess and Ricci curvature (Q1177618)

The excess of a metric space \((M,d)\) is defined to be \[ \hbox{exc}(M)=\inf_{p,q\in M}\sup_{x\in M}(d(p,x)+d(x,q)-d(p,q)). \] A closed Riemannian manifold \(M\) with vanishing excess is a twisted sphere. The author uses a compactness result of Anderson and Cheeger to show that manifolds with bounded geometry and sufficiently small excess are in fact twisted spheres: For any constants \(i_ 0,k,V>0\) there is a number \(\varepsilon=\varepsilon(n,i_ 0,k,V)\) such that every \(n\)- dimensional closed Riemannian manifold \(M\) with Ricci curvature \(\hbox{ric}(M)\geq -k^ 2(n-1)\), injectivity radius \(\hbox{inj}(M)\geq i_ 0\), volume \(\hbox{vol}(M)\leq V\) and excess \(\hbox{exc}(M)\leq \varepsilon\) is a twisted sphere. Moreover he shows that the lower bound on the Ricci curvature is a necessary assumption: There is a family \(\{g_ \varepsilon\}\) of smooth Riemannian metrics on the 2-torus \(T\) of uniformly bounded volume, diameter and injectivity radius and such that \(\hbox{exc}(T,g_ \varepsilon)\to 0\) (\(\varepsilon\to 0\)). The Ricci curvature of these metrics is not bounded from below. Since the excess of a closed \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold \(M\) with \(\hbox{ric}(M)\geq n-1\) and \(\hbox{diam}(M)\geq \pi-\varepsilon\) tends to zero as \(\varepsilon\to 0\) one obtains a diameter-sphere-theorem that only involves the Ricci curvature and the injectivity radius: For \(i_ 0>0\) there is \(\varepsilon = \varepsilon(n,i_ 0)>0\) such that a closed \(n\)-dimensional manifold with \(\hbox{ric}(M)\geq n-1\), \(\hbox{inj}(M)\geq i_ 0\) and \(\hbox{diam}(M)\geq \pi-\varepsilon\) is a twisted sphere.