Related papers: Aspherical groups and manifolds with extreme prope…

The notion of an open collar is generalized to that of a pseudo-collar. Important properties and examples are discussed. The main result gives conditions which guarantee the existence of a pseudo-collar structure on the end of an open…

We prove the following result: Let $(M,g_0)$ be a complete noncompact manifold of dimension $n\geq 12$ with isotropic curvature bounded below by a positive constant, with scalar curvature bounded above, and with injectivity radius bounded…

We construct uncountably many discrete groups of type $FP$; in particular we construct groups of type $FP$ that do not embed in any finitely presented group. We compute the ordinary, $\ell^2$- and compactly-supported cohomology of these…

We use differential forms on loop spaces to prove that the fundamental group of certain geometric transformation groups is infinite. Examples include both finite and infinite dimensional Lie groups. The finite dimensional examples are the…

We define \emph{piecewise rank 1} manifolds, which are aspherical manifolds that generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric,…

Understanding the relationships between geometry and topology is a central theme in Riemannian geometry. We establish two results on the fundamental groups of open (complete and noncompact) $n$-manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature and…

We study noncompact, complete, finite volume, negatively curved manifolds $M$. We construct $M$ with infinitely generated fundamental groups in all dimensions $n \geq 2$. We construct $M$ whose cusp cross sections are compact hyperbolic…

We show that a finite type duality group of dimension $d>2$ is the fundamental group of a $(d+3)$-manifold with rationally acyclic universal cover. We use this to find closed manifolds with rationally acyclic universal cover and some…

In this paper, we study lower bounds on the K-theory of the maximal $C^*$-algebra of a discrete group based on the amount of torsion it contains. We call this the finite part of the operator K-theory and give a lower bound that is valid for…

We show that the group ${\Cal D}(M)$ of pseudoisotopy classes of diffeomorphisms of a manifold of dimension $\geq 5$ and of finite fundamental group is commensurable to an arithmetic group. As a result $\pi_0(\text{{\it Diff\,M}})$ is a…

We show that a certain geometric property, the QSF introduced by S. Brick and M. Mihalik, is universally true for {\ibf all} finitely presented groups $\Gamma$. One way of defining this property is the existence of a smooth compact manifold…

Mapping class groups of Haken 3-manifolds enjoy many of the homological finiteness properties of mapping class groups of 2-manifolds of finite type. For example, H(M) has a torsionfree subgroup of finite index, which is geometrically finite…

In this paper we confirm a folklore conjecture which suggests that for a complete noncompact manifold $M$ of finite volume with sectional curvature $-1 \leq K \leq 0$, if the universal cover of $M$ is a visibility manifold, then the…

Let $P \subset \mathbb{R}^{d}$ be a closed convex cone. Assume that $P$ is pointed, i.e. the intersection $P \cap -P=\{0\}$ and $P$ is spanning, i.e. $P-P=\mathbb{R}^{d}$. Denote the interior of $P$ by $\Omega$. Let $E$ be a product system…

Let M be a graph manifold. We prove that fundamental groups of embedded incompressible surfaces in M are separable in the fundamental group of M, and that the double cosets for crossing surfaces are also separable. We deduce that if there…

Let M be a closed connected manifold. Let m(M) be the Morse number of M, that is, the minimal number of critical points of a Morse function on M. Let N be a finite cover of M of degree d. M.Gromov posed the following question: what are the…

In this note we prove that the mapping class group of a compact topological manifold $M$ with boundary is of finite type, under assumptions on its dimension and connectivity.

We provide two new proofs of a theorem of Cooper, Long and Reid which asserts that, apart from an explicit finite list of exceptional manifolds, any compact orientable irreducible 3-manifold with non-empty boundary has large fundamental…

Sixty years ago, S. B. Myers and N. E. Steenrod ({\it Ann. of Math.} {\bf 40} (1939), 400-416) showed that the isometry group of a Riemannian manifold without boundary has a structure of Lie group. Recently A. V. Bagaev and N. I. Zhukova…

Even though big mapping class groups are not countably generated, certain big mapping class groups can be generated by a coarsely bounded set and have a well defined quasi-isometry type. We show that the big mapping class group of a stable…