Space of souls in a complete open manifold of nonnegative curvature (Q809371)

A subset S of a complete open manifold M of nonnegative curvature is called a pseudo-soul, if it is homologous and isometric to a soul \(S_ 0\) with respect to the induced metric. (The soul of M was introduced by \textit{J. Cheeger} and \textit{D. Gromoll} [Ann. Math., II. Ser. 96, 413-446 (1972; Zbl 0246.53049)]. The author proves the following Theorem. The union \({\mathfrak H}\) of all pseudo-souls in M is a totally geodesic embedded submanifold which is isometric to a product manifold \(S_ 0\times N\), where N is a complete manifold of nonnegative curvature diffeomorphic to \({\mathbb{R}}^ k\) and k is the dimension of the space of all parallel normal vector fields along the soul \(S_ 0\). Furthermore any pseudo-soul in M is of the form \(S_ 0\times \{p\}\) for some \(p\in N\). The splitting case \(M=S_ 0\times N\), if the normal bundle itself is parallel, has been studied by \textit{V. Marenich} [Sov. Math., Dokl. 24, 595-597 (1981); translation from Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 261, 801-804 (1981; Zbl 0495.53037)] and \textit{M. Strake} [Manuscr. Math. 61, No.3, 315-325 (1988; Zbl 0653.53023)].