On complete Riemannian manifolds with collapsed ends (Q1318183)

An open manifold \(M\) is said to have \(n\) ends if there is a compact subset \(K\) such that for any compact subset \(K \subset K' \subset M\) the complement \(M \setminus K'\) contains exactly \(n\) unbounded components. It is well known that if a complete open manifold \(M\) of finite volume has bounded negative sectional curvature, then \(M\) has finite topological type [see \textit{M. Gromov}, Manifolds of negative curvature, J. Differ. Geom. 13, 223-230 (1978; Zbl 0433.53028)]. In particular, \(M\) has finitely many ends and each of them is TOP homeomorphic to \(N \times (0,\infty)\) for some infranilmanifold \(N\). The author proves that if \(M\) is a complete open manifold with bounded curvature and sufficiently small ends, then each end of \(M\) is an infranilend. Conversely, an open manifold with finitely many infranilends admits a complete metric with bounded curvature and arbitrarily small ends.