A notion of geometric complexity and its application to topological rigidity (Q1762413)

A closed manifold \(M\) is rigid if every homotopy equivalence between \(M\) and another closed manifold is homotopic to a homeomorphism. The Borel conjecture asserts the rigidity of closed aspherical manifolds. Many important results on the Borel conjecture have been proved by studying dynamical properties of actions of the fundamental group of \(M\). In the present paper the authors introduce a geometric invariant, called finite decomposition complexity (FDC), to study topological rigidity of manifolds. Roughly speaking, a metric space has FDC when there is an algorithm to decompose the space into simpler, more manageable pieces in an asymptotic way. A closed manifold \(M\) is stably rigid if there exists an \(n\) such that for every closed manifold \(N\) and every homotopy equivalence \(M\rightarrow N,\) the product with the identity \(M\times\mathbb{R}^{n}\rightarrow N\times\mathbb{R}^{n}\) is homotopic to a homeomorphism. The stable Borel rigidity asserts that closed aspherical manifolds are stably rigid. In the present paper the authors prove many interesting results. The main theorem is the following: A closed aspherical manifold whose fundamental group has finite decomposition complexity is stably rigid. On the other hand, it is proven that the class of FDC groups includes all countable subgroups of \(GL(n,K),\) for any field \(K\).