On the geometry of asymptotically flat manifolds (Q1983191)

Understanding to what extent curvature decay conditions determine the asymptotic geometry (and topology) of complete non-compact Riemannian manifolds is a classical and important problem in Riemannian geometry. It is known that the natural scale invariant curvature decay condition \[ |Rm| = O(r^{-2}), \] where \(r=dist(o,\,\cdot\,)\) is the distance from a base-point \(o\), imposes no topological restriction. In this paper the authors consider complete asymptotically flat manifolds, i.e. complete metrics satisfying the curvature decay condition \[ |Rm| \leq \frac{K(r)}{r^2} \] for a non-negative function \(K\in rL^1([1,\infty))\) (one often takes \(K(r)=r^{-\epsilon}\) for some \(\epsilon>0\)). Under an additional quantitative control of the holonomy of the metric around geodesic loops near infinity, the authors show that any such manifold has controlled asymptotic geometry: The metric decays to a Riemannian submersion with base metric a flat conical metric and totally geodesic fibres all isometric to a fixed flat torus. This result can be regarded as an extension of the classical results of \textit{S. Bando} et al. [Invent. Math. 97, No. 2, 313--349 (1989; Zbl 0682.53045)] on the ALE (asymptotically locally Euclidean) asymptotic geometry of complete Riemannian manifolds with faster-than-quadratic curvature decay and maximal volume growth to the case where collapse occurs at infinity and the volume growth is therefore sub-maximal. As in [loc. cit.], these results are partially motivated by the study of the asymptotic geometry of complete non-compact Ricci-flat manifolds. The authors apply their analysis to prove rigidity results for asymptotically flat Ricci-flat metrics in dimension 4 via an extension of the Hitchin-Thorpe inequality for 4-dimensional Einstein metrics to the non-compact setting within which they work. In particular, the authors prove that a Ricci-flat asymptotically flat metric on a \(4\)-manifold homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^4\) must either have tangent cone at infinity \(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}_+\) or be isometric to the Euclidean or the Taub-NUT metric.