Tits geometry of cocompact real-analytic Hadamard manifolds of dimension 4 (Q1807642)

Let \(X\) denote a Hadamard manifold, which is a complete simply connected manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. The authors consider the geometry of real analytic Hadamard manifolds \(X\) of \(\dim\leq 4\) without Euclidean factors whose isometry group \(I(X)\) acts cocompactly on \(X\); that is, the quotient space \(X/I(X)\) is compact. These conditions on \(X\) will be assumed below in all results unless stated otherwise. If \(X\) covers a compact \(C^\infty\) manifold \(M= X/\Gamma\), where \(\Gamma\) is a discrete, freely acting subgroup of \(I(X)\), then \(I(X)\) acts cocompactly on \(X\). However, the converse is false. For example, if \(I(X)\) acts transitively on \(X\) (i.e. \(X\) is homogeneous) then it is known that \(X\) covers a compact manifold \(\Leftrightarrow X\) is a Riemannian symmetric space. In this article the authors also construct a nonhomogeneous space \(X\) such that \(X\) covers no compact manifold but \(I(X)\) acts cocompactly on \(X\). The main result is the following Theorem 1.1. Let \(X\) be as above. Then, either \(I(X)\) is discrete or the boundary sphere \(\partial X\) with the Tits topology is isometric to the boundary sphere of \(\partial X^*\) with the Tits topology for some homogeneous Hadamard manifold \(X^*\) with \(\dim X^*= \dim X\). The result above shows that there is less rigidity for low-dimensional real analytic Hadamard manifolds than exists for Riemannian symmetric spaces. Let \(X\) and \(X^*\) be irreducible Riemannian symmetric spaces of nonpositive sectional curvature, arbitrary dimension and rank at least two (i.e. every geodesic of \(X\) or \(X^*\) is contained in a 2-flat, which is by definition a flat, totally geodesic, two-dimensional submanifold of \(X\)). If the boundary spheres \(\partial X\) and \(\partial X^*\) are isometric with respect to the Tits metric, then \(X\) and \(X^*\) are isometric after rescaling the metric of \(X\) (or \(X^*\)) by a constant multiple. If \(X\) is an irreducible \(C^\infty\) Hadamard manifold of rank at least two that covers a compact manifold \(M= X/\Gamma\), then \(\dim X\geq 5\) by the rank rigidity theorem of Ballmann and Burns-Spatzier. The authors obtain the following analogue of the result just stated as an application of Theorem 1.1. Corollary: Let \(X\) as above be irreducible. Then \(X\) has rank 1. The proofs of the results in this paper depend upon understanding the configuration of higher rank subspaces of \(X\) when \(\dim X=4\). A higher rank subspace \(W\) of \(X\) is a complete, totally geodesic subspace of \(X\) with rank at least two. Earlier results by the second author on this configuration are refined here. An important new ingredient is Proposition 2.4, which shows that if \(X\) as above is irreducible but \(I(X)\) is not discrete, then \(X\) is foliated by two special families \(\{V_t\}\) and \(\{W_s\}\) of 3-dimensional higher rank submanifolds such that \(V_t\cap W_s\) is a 2-flat for all \(s\), \(t\). The authors also use some work of J. Heber on the Tits geometry of a homogeneous space \(X^*\) of nonpositive curvature, here in the case that \(\dim X^*\leq 4\) and \(X^*\) contains 2-flats but no 3-flats.