Relatively maximum volume rigidity in Alexandrov geometry (Q692398)

Let \(\mathrm{ALex}^n(\kappa)\) be the set of compact Alexandrov \(n\)-spaces with \(\mathrm{curv}\geq \kappa\), \(\kappa > 0\). The authors establish several results related to the following conjecture: Let \(Z,X \in\mathrm{ALex}^n(\kappa)\) and \(f:Z \rightarrow X\) a distance-nondecreasing and surjective map. If \(\mathrm{vol}Z =\mathrm{vol}X\) then \(X\) is isometric to a gluing space produced from \(Z\) along its boundary \(\partial Z\) and \(f\) is length-preserving. In particular, \(Z\) is isometric to \(X\) if \(\partial Z = \emptyset\) or if \(f\) is surjective. The following result confirms this conjecture under additional conditions on \(f\). Namely, let \(Z,X \in\mathrm{ALex}^n(\kappa), f\) be as above and, in addition, for any \(\delta >0, f^{-1}(X^{\delta})\subseteq Z^{\tau(\delta)}\). Then \(f\) is an isometry. Here, \(\tau(\delta)\) is a function such that \(\tau(\delta)\rightarrow 0\) as \(\delta \rightarrow 0\). The authors also provide several interesting results extending volume comparison estimates of Bishop-Gromov and Burago-Gromov-Perelman.