The second twisted Betti number and the convergence of collapsing Riemannian manifolds (Q1401443)

Assume that \(\{M_i\}\) is a collapsing sequence of compact Riemannian \(n\)-manifolds with uniformly pinched sectional curvatures, \(\lambda\leq\text{sec}\;M_i\leq\Lambda\). The interesting and important question is under what additional conditions the sequence \(\{M_i\}\) stabilizes, i.e., whether there is a subsequence whose members are all diffeomorphic? The authors give new sufficient conditions which generalize a result of \textit{A. Petrunin} and \textit{W. Tuschman} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 9, 736--774 (1999; Zbl 0941.53026)] according to which the sequence stabilizes if all \(M_i\) are simply connected and their second homotopy groups are finite. Two stabilizing theorems are proved. The condition \(\pi_1(M_i)=0\) is weakened to the condition (A\(_1\)) (all \(\pi_1(M_i)\) are torsion groups with exponents uniformly bounded from above) in theorem A, and to the condition (B\(_1\)) (all \(\pi_1(M_i)\) are isomorphic to a fixed rank one group whose torsion elements have uniformly bounded order) in theorem B. To weaken the condition of A. Petrunin and W. Tuschmann (loc. cit.) on the second homotopy groups, the authors introduce new topological invariants, called twisted Betti numbers, as follows. For any homomorphism \(\rho:\pi_1(M)\to \text{Aut}(\mathbb Z^k)\), denote by \(\widetilde{b}_q(M,\mathbb Z^k_\rho)\) the rank of the cohomology group \(H^q(M, \mathbb Z^k_\rho)\) with the local coefficient system \(\mathbb Z^k_\rho\) determined by \(\rho\). The \(q\)-th twisted Betti number \(\widetilde{b}_q(M,\mathbb Z^k)\) of \(M\) is defined to be the maximum over all representations \(\rho\) of the \(\widetilde{b}_q(M; \mathbb Z^k_\rho)\). Now, let \(X\) be the Gromov-Hausdorff limit of \(\{M_i\}\), \(k=n-\dim X>0\). The \(\pi_2\)-condition of A. Petrunin and W. Tuschmann is replaced by (A\(_2\)) \(\widetilde{b}_2(M_i,\mathbb Z^k)=0\) for all \(i\) in theorem A, and by (B\(_2\))=(A\(_2\)) and (B\(_3\)) all \(\pi_2(M_i)\) are torsion groups (not necessary finite) in theorem B (no new condition in theorems A and B can be removed except might be (B\(_3\))). Various finiteness theorems as well as special cases of the Klingenberg-Sakai conjecture and the critical diameter-volume conjecture of Cheeger and Gromov follow from Theorems A and B.