Immersions with bounded curvature (Q2638547)

The author studies isometric immersions f: \(M\to N\) of arbitrary compact manifolds M into some fixed compact manifold N. His main result is that there exist only finitely many regular homotopy classes of such isometrically immersed submanifolds M, if one prescribes upper bounds for their second fundamental forms \(II_ M\) and for their diameter diam(M) or their volume vol(M), respectively. This result is very much in the spirit of Cheeger's finiteness theorem. The latter theorem has first been proved intrinsically using the nerve complex, and the improvements by S. Peters are based on the same argument. But the original proof of Gromov's compactness theorem, which implies the finiteness theorem, makes use of isometric immersions into some Euclidean space [cf. \textit{M. Gromov}, Structures métriques pour les variétés riemanniennes (Paris 1981; Zbl 0509.53034)]. The details for the necessary approximation arguments, which in fact lead to regular homotopies after passing to suitable subsequences, are given in Theorem 2.5 in [\textit{J. Cheeger} and \textit{M. Gromov}, Differential geometry and complex analysis, Vol. dedic. H. E. Rauch, 115-154 (1985; Zbl 0592.53036)].