The almost rigidity of manifolds with lower bounds on Ricci curvature and minimal volume growth (Q1971640)

A complete, noncompact Riemannian manifold that satisfies a certain quadratically decaying lower bound on the Ricci curvature has a lower bound on the growth of the volume of metric balls. The author investigates the asymptotic behavior of such spaces under the added assumption that this minimal volume growth is achieved. For example, manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature whose volume growth is linear are among the class of manifolds studied here. The analysis of the Busemann function associated to a ray plays a major role in this investigation. See also the author's two earlier papers [J. Differ. Geom. 48, 557-585 (1998; Zbl 0901.53029) and Pac. J. Math. 192, 183-189 (2000; Zbl 0951.53021)].