Structure theory of singular spaces (Q507422)

This paper demonstrates a compactness property for Riemannian manifolds which requires much weaker uniform geometric bounds than Cheeger-Gromov compactness. The limit of a sequence of manifolds satisfying these bounds is shown to be differentiable away from a singular set of bounded Minkowski dimension. A hierarchy of additional uniform properties on the sequence of the Riemannian manifolds provides improved regularity properties in the limit. These regularity properties form the basis for an analysis of the geometry of the singular limit spaces, assuming that a lower bound on the Ricci curvature holds on the regular part, which has a sufficiently differentiable Riemannian metric. No curvature conditions are required to hold on the singular part of the limit space. In the limit space, the Bishop-Gromov volume comparison holds and a version of the Cheng-Yau gradient bound is demonstrated. Volume stability and the cone rigidity theorem are shown. In the Einstein case, the Cheeger-Naber structure theory is shown to generalize, so that the limit is smooth away from a set of codimension 4 and \(L^{p<2}\) curvature bounds hold.