A class of incomplete non-positively curved manifolds (Q1919884)

The author studies a class of simply connected, not necessarily complete Riemannian manifolds of nonpositive sectional curvature with certain curvature constraints. Such manifolds have many of the properties of complete Riemannian manifolds of nonpositive sectional curvature, including geodesic convexity, the existence of an ideal boundary sphere and the property that any two points of the ideal boundary sphere may be joined by a unique geodesic. For complete Riemannian manifolds \(X\) the first two properties are satisfied and the last property is satisfied if \(X\) has strictly negative sectional curvature. One of the strong motivations for this study is the fact that the Weil-Petersson metric on Teichmüller space has nonpositive curvature but is incomplete. Before stating the main result we establish notation. Let \(X\) denote a simply connected Riemannian manifold with nonpositive sectional curvature whose not necessarily complete Riemannian metric is denoted by \(d\). Let \((\overline X,d)\) denote the metric completion of \((X,d)\). Given \(x\in X\), let \(\kappa(x)\) denote the maximum sectional curvature of any 2-plane in the tangent space \(T_xX\). The author proves the following main Theorem. Let \((X,d)\) be as above, and assume that for all \(a\in\overline X-X\) there exists a positive constant \(K\) and a neighborhood \(U\) of \(a\) in \(\overline X\) such that for all \(x\in X\cap U\) we have \(\kappa(x)\leq-1/K^2d(x,a)^2\). Then the following properties hold: 1) \(X\) is geodesically convex. 2) The completion \((\overline X,d)\) has nonpositive curvature in the sense of Busemann and Alexandrov. 3) There is a natural compactification \(X_c\) of \(X\) so that \(X_c\) is homeomorphic to a closed ball with \(X\) as its interior. 4) There is a natural continuous injection \(i:\overline X\to X_c\) from \(\overline X\) in the metric topology to \(X_c\) in its topology as a ball. 5) Let \((x,y)\in(X_c\times X_c)- (X^\infty_I\times X^\infty_I)\), where \(X^\infty_I= X_c-i(\overline X)\). Then there exists a unique geodesic \(\gamma\) of \(X\) joining \(x\) to \(y\), and the geodesic \(\gamma\) depends continuously on the endpoints \(x\) and \(y\). Suppose furthermore that there exist a point \(p_0\) in \(X\) and positive constants \(L_0\) and \(R_0\) such that if \(x\) is a point of \(X\) satisfying \(d(x,p_0)\geq R_0\), then \(\kappa(x)\leq- 1/L^2_0d(x,p_0)^2\). We conclude: 6) Any two points \(x\) and \(y\) of \(X_c\) may be joined by a unique geodesic that depends continuously on the endpoints \(x\) and \(y\).