Related papers: Aspherical groups and manifolds with extreme prope…

This paper presents an investigation of the relation between some positivity of the curvature and the finiteness of fundamental groups in semi-Riemannian geometry. We consider semi-Riemannian submersions $\pi : (E, g) \rightarrow (B,…

We give an example of a finitely presented group $G$ with two non-$\pi_1$-equivalent asymptotic cones.

This survey paper concerns mainly with some asymptotic topological properties of finitely presented discrete groups: quasi-simple filtration (QSF), geometric simple connectivity (GSC), topological inverse-representations, and the notion of…

We show that for a smooth, closed 2-connected manifold $M$ of dimension $d \geq 6$, the topological mapping class group $\pi_0 \mathrm{Homeo}(M)$ is residually finite, in contrast to the situation for the smooth mapping class group $\pi_0…

We consider a finite abelian group $M$ of odd exponent $n$ with a symplectic form $\omega: M\times M\to \mu_n$ and the Heisenberg extension $1\to \mu_n\to H\to M\to 1$ with the commutator $\omega$. According to the Stone - von Neumann…

In [HT], two of us constructed a closed oriented 4-dimensional manifold with fundamental group $\Z$ that does not split off $S^1\times S^3$. In this note we show that this 4-manifold, and various others derived from it, do not admit smooth…

Let $M$ be complete nonpositively curved Riemannian manifold of finite volume whose fundamental group $\Gamma$ does not contain a finite index subgroup which is a product of infinite groups. We show that the universal cover $\tilde M$ is a…

Consider the cyclic group C_2 of order two acting by complex-conjugation on the unit circle S^1. The main result is that a finitely dominated manifold W of dimension > 4 admits a cocompact, free, discontinuous action by the infinite…

Ruberman in the 90's showed that the group of exotic diffeomorphisms of closed 4-manifolds can be infinitely generated. We provide various results on the question of when such infinite generation can localize to a smaller embedded…

Let M be a smooth compact connected oriented manifold of dimension at least two endowed with a volume form. Assuming certain conditions on the fundamental group $\pi_1(M)$ we construct quasi-isometric embeddings of either free Abelian or…

Simply-connected manifolds of positive sectional curvature $M$ are speculated to have a rigid topological structure. In particular, they are conjectured to be rationally elliptic, i.e., all but finitely many homotopy groups are conjectured…

We study finite group actions on smooth manifolds of the form $M\#\Sigma$, where $\Sigma$ is an exotic $n$-sphere and $M$ is a closed aspherical space form. We give a classification result for free actions of finite groups on $M\#\Sigma$…

Inspired by a recent result of Levine-Lidman-Piccirillo, we construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures on some closed four-manifolds with definite intersection form and fundamental group isomorphic to $\Z /2\Z$. Similar…

We show that the discrete Heisenberg group has unbounded dead-end depth with respect to every finite generating set. We also show that, in contrast, it has bounded retreat depth.

We show that a closed, connected, oriented, Riemannian $n$-manifold, admitting a branched cover of bounded length distortion from $\mathbb R^n$, has a virtually Abelian fundamental group.

We construct finitely generated groups with strong fixed point properties. Let $\mathcal{X}_{ac}$ be the class of Hausdorff spaces of finite covering dimension which are mod-$p$ acyclic for at least one prime $p$. We produce the first…

We exhibit a closed aspherical 5-manifold of nonpositive curvature that fibers over a circle whose fundamental group is hyperbolic relative to abelian subgroups such that the fiber is a closed aspherical 4-manifold whose fundamental group…

The polynomial invariants $q_d$ for a large class of smooth 4-manifolds are shown to satisfy universal relations. The relations reflect the possible genera of embedded surfaces in the 4-manifold and lead to a structure theorem for the…

We provide a geometric characterization of manifolds of dimension 3 with fundamental groups of which all conjugacy classes except 1 are infinite, namely of which the von Neumann algebras are factors of type $II_1$: they are essentially the…

We give a simple proof of a result originally due to Dimca and Suciu: a group that is both Kaehler and the fundamental group of a closed three-manifold is finite. We also prove that a group that is both the fundamental group of a closed…