Manifolds with non-stable fundamental groups at infinity, II (Q1416624)

This paper is a continuation of a previous one by the first author [\textit{C. R. Guilbault}, Geom. Topol. 4, 537-579 (2000; Zbl 0958.57023)], where a program for generalizing Siebenmann's famous collaring theorem [\textit{L. C. Siebenmann}, The obstruction to finding a boundary for an open manifold of dimension greater than five, Ph. D. thesis, Princeton University (1965)] is presented to include open manifolds with non-stable fundamental group systems at infinity. In fact the authors focus on some questions raised in that paper. More precisely, let \(M^n\) be a (PL) \(n\)-manifold with compact (possibly empty) boundary. A set \(N\subset M^n\) is a neighborhood of infinity if \(\overline{M^n-N}\) is compact. One says that \(M^n\) is inward tame at infinity if, for arbitrarily small neighborhoods of infinity \(N\), there exist homotopies \(H:N\times [0,1]\to N\) such that \(H_0=1_N\) and \(\overline{H_1(N)}\) is compact. The authors prove that an inward tame manifold \(M^n\) has only finitely many ends and every one ended inward tame \(n\)-manifold \(M^n\) (\(n\geq 2\)) has a semistable fundamental group (inverse) system at infinity (i.e., this system is equivalent to a system in which all bonding maps are surjections) and stable \(j\)-th homology at infinity with \(R\)-coefficients for all \(j\) and any commutative ring with unity \(R\). They also construct (for each \(n\geq 6\)) a one ended open \(n\)-manifold \(M_{*}^n\), which is inward tame and which does not have a perfectly semistable fundamental group system at infinity (i.e., it cannot be arranged that the kernels of the bonding maps are perfect groups), but is not pseudo-collarable, that is \(M_{*}^n\) does not contain a pseudo-collar neighborhood of infinity. In doing so, the authors exhibit the first known examples of open manifolds that are inward tame and have vanishing Wall finiteness obstruction at infinity, but are not pseudo-collarable. Finally, a related open question is discussed.