An obstruction to the smoothability of singular nonpositively curved metrics on 4-manifolds by patterns of incompressible tori

DOI10.1007/S00039-015-0341-8MaRDI QIDQ897002zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Stephan Stadler

Publication date 16 December 2015

Published in Geometric and Functional Analysis. GAFA (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2198

zbMATH Keywords

\(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) spacegeometric actionincompressible torisingular metric of nonpositive curvature

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Global Riemannian geometry, including pinching (53C20)

Abstract: We give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible 2-tori sufficiently complicated to force branching of geodesics for nonpositively curved metrics.

Review text

The main object of this paper is to give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive sectional curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. More precisely, the author proves the following result (Theorem 1): If \(V\) is a closed 4-dimensional manifold which admits a non-trivial finite branched covering \(\beta : V\longrightarrow \Sigma\times \Sigma\) over the product of a hyperbolic surface \(\Sigma\) with itself such that the branching locus equals the diagonal \(\triangle_{\Sigma}\subset \Sigma\times\Sigma\), then \(V\) admits no smooth Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvature. The above theorem is an application of a more general result (Theorem 2), which provides an obstruction for a discrete group \(f_i\) to act geometrically on a Hadamard manifold. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible 2-tori sufficiently complicated to force branching of geodesics for nonpositively curved metrics.

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Cites work

• 4-dimensional locally \(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\)-manifolds with no Riemannian smoothings
• A characterization of irreducible symmetric spaces and Euclidean buildings of higher rank by their asymptotic geometry
• A splitting theorem for spaces of nonpositive curvature
• Manifolds of nonpositive curvature
• Quasiflats in Hadamard spaces
• Rigidity of quasi-isometries for symmetric spaces and Euclidean buildings
• The local structure of length spaces with curvature bounded above

Cited in

(4)

• Mapping class groups, multiple Kodaira fibrations, and CAT(0) spaces
• Short retractions of CAT(1) spaces
• \(\mathrm{CAT}(0)\) spaces of higher rank. I
• CAT(0) 4-manifolds are Euclidean

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