At infinity of finite-dimensional CAT\((0)\) spaces (Q2655146)

Let \(X\) be a finite-dimensional CAT\((0)\) space. The geometric dimension \(\dim(X)\) is defined as \(\dim(X)=\sup\{\dim(S_xX)+1;\;x\in X\}\), where \(S_xX\) denotes the space of directions at the point \(x\). It is equivalent to the fact that the topological dimension of all compact subsets of \(X\) is bounded above by \(n\). The space \(X\) is said to have telescopic dimension \(\leq n\) if every asymptotic cone has geometric dimension \(\leq n\). A family \({\mathcal F}\) of subsets of a given set is called filtering if for all \(E,F\in{\mathcal F}\) there exists \(D\in{\mathcal F}\) such that \(D\subset E\cap F\). In this paper, the authors study properties of CAT\((0)\) spaces. They show that if \(X\) is a complete CAT\((0)\) space of finite telescopic dimension and \(\{X_\alpha\}\) is a filtering family of closed convex subspaces, then either the intersection \(\bigcap_\alpha X_\alpha\) is non-empty, or the intersection of the visual boundaries \(\bigcap_\alpha \partial X_\alpha\) is a non-empty subset of \(\partial X\) of intrinsic radius at most \(\pi/2\). Using this fact, the authors extend many results known for proper CAT\((0)\) spaces to finite-dimensional spaces, including the existence of canonical fixed points at infinity for parabolic isometries, algebraic and geometric restrictions on amenable group actions, and geometric superrigidity for non-elementary actions of irreducible uniform lattices in products of locally compact groups.