Ends of finite volume, nonpositively curved manifolds (Q1741818)

This article considers complete finite-volume manifolds of bounded negative sectional curvature. Gromov showed that such a manifold \(M\) is homeomorphic to the interior of a manifold with boundary. This boundary, denoted \(\partial M\), is the subject of this paper. The author reports that Nguyen Phan has shown that if \(M\) has dimension \(4\) then each component of \(\partial M\) is aspherical. This is generalised here to show that the universal cover of \(\partial M\) has vanishing \(H_{n-2}\). The same is true for the \(\pi_1 (M)\)-cover of \(\partial M\). As a corollary, it can be seen that \(\pi_1 (M)\) is freely indecomposable. These results are also shown to hold in the case where the sectional curvature is merely non-positive, provided the manifold is tame, i.e., is homeomorphic to the interior of a manifold with boundary.