Nilpotency, almost nonnegative curvature, and the gradient flow on Alexandrov spaces (Q974040)

A closed smooth manifold \(M\) of dimension \(m\) is said to be almost nonnegatively curved if it can Gromov-Hausdorff converge to a single point under a lower curvature bound, i.e., if it admits a sequence of Riemannian metrics with sectional curvatures bounded from below by \(-1/n\) and diameters bounded from above by \(1/n\). The authors show: Theorem A. Let \(M\) be a closed almost nonnegatively curved manifold. Then a finite cover of \(M\) is a nilpotent space. The authors also provide an affirmative answer to a conjecture of \textit{K. Fukaya} and \textit{T. Yamaguchi} [Ann. Math. (2) 136, No.~2, 253--333 (1992; Zbl 0770.53028)]. Theorem B. Let \(M\) be an almost nonnegatively curved \(m\)-manifold. Then \(\pi_1(M)\) contains a nilpotent subgroup of index at most \(C(m)\). The authors also establish a fibration theorem. Theorem C. Let \(M\) be an almost nonnegatively curved manifold. Then a finite cover \(\tilde M\) of \(M\) is the total space of a fiber bundle \(F\rightarrow\tilde M\rightarrow N\) over a nilmanifold \(N\) with simply connected fiber \(F\). Moreover, the fiber \(F\) is almost nonnegatively curved in a generalized sense. The authors use Alexandrov geometry and the gradient flow of the square of a distance function. They use ``limit fundamental groups of Alexandrov spaces'' and discuss some open questions.