On hyperbolic groups with spheres as boundary (Q531752)

A hyperbolic group in the sense of Gromov means the fundamental group of an \(n\)-dimensional closed Riemannian manifold with negative sectional curvature. The authors give the following theorems: Theorem A. Let \(G\) be a torsion-free hyperbolic group and let \(n\) be an integer \(\geq 6\). The following statements are equivalent: {\parindent6.5mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] The boundary \(\partial G\) is homeomorphic to \(S^{n-1}\). \item[(ii)] There is a closed aspherical topological manifold \(M\) such that \(G\cong \pi_1(M)\), its universal covering \(\widetilde{M}\) is homeomorphic to \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and the compactification of \(\widetilde{M}\) by \(\partial G\) is homeomorphic to \(D^n\). \end{itemize}} The authors claim that it seems likely that this result holds also if \(n=5\). Their method does not give information in dimensions \(n\leq 4\) for usual problems about surgery. Theorem B. Let \(G\) and \(H\) be torsion-free hyperbolic groups such that \(\partial G\cong\partial H\). Then \(G\) can be realized as the fundamental group of a closed aspherical manifold of dimension at least \(6\) if and only if \(H\) can be realized as the fundamental group of such a manifold. Moreover, even in the case when neither can be realized by a closed aspherical manifold, they can both be realized by closed aspherical homology ANR-manifolds which both have the same Quinn obstruction provided that \(\partial G\) has the integer Čech cohomology of \(S^{n-1}\) for \(n\geq 6\).