Publications of SPP2026
On this site you find preprints and publications produced within the projects and with the support of the DFG priority programme „Geometry at Infinity“.
We prove that any length metric space homeomorphic to a surface may be decomposed into non-overlapping convex triangles of arbitrarily small diameter. This generalizes a previous result of Alexandrov--Zalgaller for surfaces of bounded curvature.
Related project(s):
24Minimal surfaces in metric spaces
Based on Morse theory for the energy functional on path spaces we develop a deformation theory for mapping spaces of spheres into orthogonal groups. This is used to show that these mapping spaces are weakly homotopy equivalent, in a stable range, to mapping spaces associated to orthogonal Clifford representations. Given an oriented Euclidean bundle $V \to X$ of rank divisible by four over a finite complex $X$ we derive a stable decomposition result for vector bundles over the sphere bundle $\mathbb{S}( \mathbb{R} \oplus V)$ in terms of vector bundles and Clifford module bundles over $X$. After passing to topological K-theory these results imply classical Bott-Thom isomorphism theorems.
Journal | São Paulo Journal of Mathematical Sciences (to appear) |
Link to preprint version |
Related project(s):
15Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds52Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds II
We investigate the class of geodesic metric discs satisfying a uniform quadratic isoperimetric inequality and uniform bounds on the length of the boundary circle. We show that the closure of this class as a subset of Gromov-Hausdorff space is intimately related to the class of geodesic metric disc retracts satisfying comparable bounds. This kind of discs naturally come up in the context of the solution of Plateau's problem in metric spaces by Lytchak and Wenger as generalizations of minimal surfaces.
Journal | Geom. Dedicata |
Volume | 210 |
Pages | 151-164 |
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Link to published version |
Related project(s):
24Minimal surfaces in metric spaces
We introduce a new technique to the study and identification of submanifolds of simply-connected symmetric spaces of compact type based upon an approach computing k-positive Ricci curvature of the ambient manifolds and using this information in order to determine how highly connected the embeddings are. This provides codimension ranges in which the Cartan type of submanifolds satisfying certain conditions which generalize being totally geodesic necessarily equals the one of the ambient manifold. Using results by Guijarro-Wilhelm our approach partly generalizes recent work by Berndt-Olmos on the index conjecture.
Related project(s):
79Alexandrov geometry in the light of symmetry and topology
In the present article we introduce and study a class of topological reflection spaces that we call Kac-Moody symmetric spaces. These generalize Riemannian symmetric spaces of non-compact type. We observe that in a non-spherical Kac-Moody symmetric space there exist pairs of points that do not lie on a common geodesic; however, any two points can be connected by a chain of geodesic segments. We moreover classify maximal flats in Kac-Moody symmetric spaces and study their intersection patterns, leading to a classification of global and local automorphisms. Unlike Riemannian symmetric spaces, non-spherical non-affine irreducible Kac-Moody symmetric spaces also admit an invariant causal structure. For causal and anti-causal geodesic rays with respect to this structure we find a notion of asymptoticity, which allows us to define a future and past boundary of such Kac-Moody symmetric space. We show that these boundaries carry a natural polyhedral structure and are cellularly isomorphic to the halves of the geometric realization of the twin buildings of the underlying split real Kac-Moody group. We also show that every automorphism of the symmetric space is uniquely determined by the induced cellular automorphism of the future and past boundary. The invariant causal structure on a non-spherical non-affine irreducible Kac-Moody symmetric space gives rise to an invariant pre-order on the underlying space, and thus to a subsemigroup of the Kac-Moody group. We conclude that while in some aspects Kac-Moody symmetric spaces closely resemble Riemannian symmetric spaces, in other aspects they behave similarly to ordered affine hovels, their non-Archimedean cousins.
Journal | Münster J. Math. |
Volume | 13 |
Pages | 1-114 |
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Link to published version |
Related project(s):
61At infinity of symmetric spaces
A geodesic γ in an abstract reflection space X (in the sense of Loos, without any assumption of differential structure) is known to canonically admits an action of a 1-parameter subgroup of the group of transvections of X. In this article, we prove an analog of this result stating that, if X contains an embedded hyperbolic plane, then this yields a canonical action of a subgroup of the transvection group of X isomorphic to a perfect central extension of PSL(2,R). This result can be further extended to arbitrary Riemannian symmetric spaces of non-compact type embedded in X and can be used to prove that a Riemannian symmetric space and, more generally, the Kac-Moody symmetric space G/K for an algebraically simply connected two-spherical Kac-Moody group G satisfies a universal property similar to the universal property that the group G satisfies itself.
Journal | Adv. Geometry |
Volume | 20 |
Pages | 499-506 |
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Link to published version |
Related project(s):
61At infinity of symmetric spaces
The Reidemeister number R(φ) of a group automorphism φ∈Aut(G) encodes the number of orbits of the φ-twisted conjugation action of G on itself, and the Reidemeister spectrum of G is defined as the set of Reidemeister numbers of all of its automorphisms. We obtain a sufficient criterion for some groups of triangular matrices over integral domains to have property R∞, which means that their Reidemeister spectrum equals {∞}. Using this criterion, we show that Reidemeister numbers for certain soluble S-arithmetic groups behave differently from their linear algebraic counterparts -- contrasting with results of Steinberg, Bhunia, and Bose.
Related project(s):
62A unified approach to Euclidean buildings and symmetric spaces of noncompact type
We introduce a new invariant of finitely generated groups, the ambiguity function, and we prove that every finitely generated acylindrically hyperbolic group has a linearly bounded ambiguity function. We use this result to prove that the relative exponential growth rate $\lim \limits_{n \rightarrow \infty} \sqrt[n]{\abs{B^{X}_H(n)}}$ of a subgroup $H$ of a finitely generated acylindrically hyperbolic group $G$ exists with respect to every finite generating set $X$ of $G$, if $H$ contains a loxodromic element of $G$. Further we prove that the relative exponential growth rate of every finitely generated subgroup $H$ of a right-angled Artin group $A_{\Gamma}$ exists with respect to every finite generating set of $A_{\Gamma}$.
Journal | Journal of Group Theory |
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Related project(s):
8Parabolics and invariants
We show that maximal causal curves for a Lipschitz continuous Lorentzian metric admit a C^{1,1}-parametrization and that they solve the geodesic equation in the sense of Filippov in this parametrization. Our proof shows that maximal causal curves are either everywhere lightlike or everywhere timelike. Furthermore, the proof demonstrates that maximal causal curves for an α-Hölder continuous Lorentzian metric admit a C^{1,α/4}-parametrization.
Related project(s):
24Minimal surfaces in metric spaces66Minimal surfaces in metric spaces II
We investigate the geometric and topological structure of equidistant decompositions of Riemannian manifolds.
Related project(s):
24Minimal surfaces in metric spaces66Minimal surfaces in metric spaces II
We construct short retractions of a CAT(1) space to its small convex subsets. This construction provides an alternative geometric description of an analytic tool introduced by Wilfrid Kendall.
Our construction uses a tractrix flow which can be defined as a gradient flow for a family of functions of certain type. In an appendix we prove a general existence result for gradient flows of time-dependent locally Lipschitz semiconcave functions, which is of independent interest.
Related project(s):
24Minimal surfaces in metric spaces66Minimal surfaces in metric spaces II
We show that a strict, nearly Kähler 6-manifold with either second or third Betti number nonzero is linearly unstable with respect to the \(\nu\)-entropy of Perelman and hence is dynamically unstable for the Ricci flow.
Journal | Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 57 no. 1, 15-22 (2020) |
Link to preprint version |
Related project(s):
74Rigidity, stability and deformations in nearly parallel G2-geometry
A Calderón projector for an elliptic operator $P$ on a manifold with boundary $X$ is a projection from general boundary data to the set of boundary data of solutions $u$ of $Pu=0$. Seeley proved in 1966 that for compact $X$ and for $P$ uniformly elliptic up to the boundary there is a Calder\'on projector which is a pseudodifferential operator on $\partial X$. We generalize this result to the setting of fibred cusp operators, a class of elliptic operators on certain non-compact manifolds having a special fibred structure at infinity.
This applies, for example, to the Laplacian on certain locally symmetric spaces or on particular singular spaces, such as a domain with cusp singularity or the complement of two touching smooth strictly convex domains in Euclidean space. Our main technical tool is the $\phi$-pseudodifferential calculus introduced by Mazzeo and Melrose.
In our presentation we provide a setting that may be useful for doing analogous constructions for other types of singularities.
Related project(s):
13Analysis on spaces with fibred cusps49Analysis on spaces with fibred cusps II
We study the low energy resolvent of the Hodge Laplacian on a manifold equipped with a fibred boundary metric. We determine the precise asymptotic behavior of the resolvent as a fibred boundary (aka $\phi$-) pseudodifferential operator when the resolvent parameter tends to zero.
This generalizes previous work by Guillarmou and Sher who considered asymptotically conic metrics, which correspond to the special case when the fibres are points. The new feature in the case of non-trivial fibres is that the resolvent has different asymptotic behavior on the subspace of forms that are fibrewise harmonic and on its orthogonal complement. To deal with this, we introduce an appropriate 'split' pseudodifferential calculus, building on and extending work by Grieser and Hunsicker. Our work sets the basis for the discussion of spectral invariants on $\phi$-manifolds.
Related project(s):
13Analysis on spaces with fibred cusps23Spectral geometry, index theory and geometric flows on singular spaces49Analysis on spaces with fibred cusps II
We define a functional \({\cal J}(h)\) for the space of Hermitian metrics on an arbitrary Higgs bundle over a compact Kähler manifold, as a natural generalization of the mean curvature energy functional of Kobayashi for holomorphic vector bundles, and study some of its basic properties. We show that \({\cal J}(h)\) is bounded from below by a nonnegative constant depending on invariants of the Higgs bundle and the Kähler manifold, and that when achieved, its absolute minima are Hermite-Yang-Mills metrics. We derive a formula relating \({\cal J}(h)\) and another functional \({\cal I}(h)\), closely related to the Yang-Mills-Higgs functional, which can be thought of as an extension of a formula of Kobayashi for holomorphic vector bundles to the Higgs bundles setting. Finally, using 1-parameter families in the space of Hermitian metrics on a Higgs bundle, we compute the first variation of \({\cal J}(h)\), which is expressed as a certain \(L^{2}\)-Hermitian inner product. It follows that a Hermitian metric on a Higgs bundle is a critical point of \({\cal J}(h)\) if and only if the corresponding Hitchin-Simpson mean curvature is parallel with respect to the Hitchin-Simpson connection.
Journal | International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics |
Publisher | World Scientific |
Volume | 17(13) |
Line | art. no. 2050200 |
Link to preprint version | |
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Related project(s):
32Asymptotic geometry of the Higgs bundle moduli space69Wall-crossing and hyperkähler geometry of moduli spaces
We construct smooth bundles with base and fiber products of two spheres whose total spaces have nonvanishing A-hat-genus. We then use these bundles to locate nontrivial rational homotopy groups of spaces of Riemannian metrics with lower curvature bounds for all Spin manifolds of dimension 6 or at least 10, which admit such a metric and are a connected sum of some manifold and \(S^n\times S^n\) or \(S^n\times S^{n+1}\), respectively. We also construct manifolds M whose spaces of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature have homotopy groups that contain elements of infinite order that lie in the image of the orbit map induced by the push-forward action of the diffeomorphism group of M.
Journal | International Mathematics Research Notices |
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Related project(s):
9Diffeomorphisms and the topology of positive scalar curvature15Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds
We characterize cohomogeneity one manifolds and homogeneous spaces with a compact Lie group action admitting an invariant metric with positive scalar curvature.
Related project(s):
36Cohomogeneity, curvature, cohomology
In each dimension $4k+1\geq 9$, we exhibit infinite families of closed manifolds with fundamental group $\mathbb Z_2$ for which the moduli space of metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature has infinitely many path components. Examples of closed manifolds with finite fundamental group with this property were known before only in dimension $5$ and dimensions $4k+3\geq 7$.
Related project(s):
15Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds52Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds II
We show that a properly convex projective structure \(\mathfrak{p}\) on a closed oriented surface of negative Euler characteristic arises from a Weyl connection if and only if \(\mathfrak{p}\) is hyperbolic. We phrase the problem as a non-linear PDE for a Beltrami differential by using that \(\mathfrak{p}\) admits a compatible Weyl connection if and only if a certain holomorphic curve exists. Turning this non-linear PDE into a transport equation, we obtain our result by applying methods from geometric inverse problems. In particular, we use an extension of a remarkable \(L^2\)-energy identity known as Pestov's identity to prove a vanishing theorem for the relevant transport equation.
Journal | Analysis & PDE |
Publisher | Mathematical Sciences Publishers |
Volume | 13 |
Pages | 1073--1097 |
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Related project(s):
26Projective surfaces, Segre structures and the Hitchin component for PSL(n,R)
Let M be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on M has non-trivial higher homotopy groups.
Moreover, denote by \mathcal{M}^+_0(M) the moduli space of positive scalar cuvature metrics on M associated to the group of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of M. We show that if M belongs to a certain class of manifolds which includes (2n−2)-connected (4n−2)-dimensional manifolds, then the fundamental group of \mathcal{M}^+_0(M) is non-trivial.
Journal | Int. Math. Res. Not. IMRN |
Link to preprint version | |
Link to published version |
Related project(s):
15Spaces and Moduli Spaces of Riemannian Metrics with Curvature Bounds on compact and non-compact Manifolds