Minimal volume of complete uniform visibility manifolds with finite volume (Q2861587)

The simplicial volume (also called Gromov's norm) of a compact manifold with boundary is a topological invariant introduced by Gromov. It is defined as the infimum of the \(\ell^1\)-norms of all representatives of the relative fundamental class \([M,\partial M]\) of \(M\).NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThurston showed that complete Riemanian manifolds of finite volume with pinched negative sectional curvature have positive simplicial volume. Pinched negative curvature implies in particular that the universal cover is Gromov hyperbolic. The author proves that Thurston's theorem extends to uniform visibility manifolds, which are complete manifolds whose curvature satisfy \(-1\leq K\leq 0\) and whose universal cover is hyperbolic. Combining this with a celebrated inequality due to Gromov, this implies that the minimal volume of such manifolds is also positive.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe proof combines an old result of Eberlein with a more recent one of Dahmani and Yaman. More precisely, Eberlein proved in 1980 that a uniform visibility manifolds with finite volume \(M\) is homeomorphic to the interior of a compact manifold \(V\) with boundary \(\partial V\). Using a standard duality argument, this reduces the problem to proving the existence of a cohomology class \(\omega\) satisfying \(\langle\omega,[V,\partial V] \rangle =1\), and such that \(\omega\) is bounded. This follows if one can show that the natural map \(H_b^n(V,\partial V)\to H^n(V,\partial V)\) is onto. On the other hand, it results from well-known arguments that the fundamental group \(\Gamma\) of \(M\) is relatively hyperbolic with respect to its parabolic subgroups \(\mathcal{P}=\{P_1,\dots,P_l\}\). The author is able to conclude thanks to a result of Dahmani and Yaman from 2005, according to which the natural map \(H_b^n(\Gamma,\mathcal{P})\to H^n(\Gamma,\mathcal{P})\) is onto.