Topological finiteness theorems for manifolds in Gromov-Hausdorff space (Q1331689)

The author studies boundary points in the space \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}} (n,\rho)\) of all closed topological \(n\)-manifolds with metrics having a common contractibility function \(\rho\). A topology on \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}} (n,\rho)\) is the subset topology induced by the natural imbedding of \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}}(n,\rho)\) in the Gromov-Hausdorff space \({\mathcal C} {\mathcal M}\) of all compact metric spaces with the Gromov- Hausdorff distance. The main result states that there are only finitely many topological types in \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}} (n,\rho)\). The proof is based on the precompactness of \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}} (n,\rho)\) in \({\mathcal C} {\mathcal M}\) and on a solution of the finiteness problem for a sequence \(M^ n_ i\) in \({\mathcal M}^{\text{man}} (n,\rho)\) converging to \(X \in {\mathcal C} {\mathcal M}\). The last problem is highly nontrivial because of the possibility of having the limit space \(X\) infinite- dimensional. It turns out that in the case of infinite dimensional \(X\) the stabilization conjecture by \textit{K. Grove, P. V. Peterson} and \textit{J.-Y. Wu} [Invent. Math. 99, No. 1, 205-213 (1990; Zbl 0747.53033)] is incorrect, nevertheless the finiteness condition holds.