Rigidity of manifolds with boundary under a lower Ricci curvature bound (Q522133)

Let \(M\) be an \(n\)-dimensional, connected, complete Riemannian manifold with boundary, \(n\geq 2\), whose Ricci curvature satisfies \(\mathrm{Ric}_M\geq (n-1)\,\kappa\) and the mean curvature of the boundary satisfies \(H_{\partial M}\geq\lambda\), for some constants \(\kappa,\lambda\in\mathbb R\). This paper is devoted to the study of some geometrical properties of \(M\). The first result proved by the author, Theorem 1.1, is a kind of Bishop-Gromov volume comparison theorem for tubular neighborhoods of the boundary \(\partial M\). More precisely, if \(0<r\leq R\), then \[ \frac{\mathrm{vol}_g\,B_R(\partial M)}{\mathrm{vol}_g\, B_r(\partial M)} \leq \frac{\mathrm{vol}_{g_{\kappa,\lambda}^n} B_R(\partial M^n_{\kappa,\lambda})} {\mathrm{vol}_{g_{\kappa,\lambda}^n} B_r (\partial M^n_{\kappa,\lambda})}, \] where \(\mathrm{vol}\) denotes the volume with respect to the metric indicated in the subscript, \(M_{\kappa,\lambda}^n\) is a model space (a metric ball in a space form if and only if \(\kappa\) and \(\lambda\) satisfy the \textit{ball-condition}), and \(B_r(\partial M)\) is the closed tubular neighborhood of radius \(r\) of \(\partial M\). Two proofs of this result are given: The first one follows a classical path involving the study of the cut locus of the distance function to the boundary and comparison results for Jacobi fields. The second one involves a measure contraction inequality in the sense of Sturm-Ohta, Proposition 8.4, from which the proof of Theorem 1.1 follows. Theorem 1.1 implies the volume growth rigidity Theorem 1.6. In addition to these results, a Cheeger-Gromov splitting-type theorem is proven in Theorem 1.8 under the assumption of existence of a ray (i.e., a geodesic \(\gamma:[0,\infty)\to M\) with \(\gamma (0)\in\partial M\) realizing the distance to \(\partial M\) for all values of \(t\)). Finally, lower estimates for the first Dirichlet eigenvalue of the \(p\)-Laplacian are given in Theorems 1.10 and 1.13. As mentioned by the author, related results can be found in [\textit{R. Perales}, Differ. Geom. Appl. 48, 23-37 (2016; Zbl 1346.53038)].