Variations on a Theme of Borel: An Essay on the Role of the Fundamental Group in Rigidity

This document was uploaded by one of our users. The uploader already confirmed that they had the permission to publish it. If you are author/publisher or own the copyright of this documents, please report to us by using this DMCA report form.

Simply click on the Download Book button.

Yes, Book downloads on Ebookily are 100% Free.

Sometimes the book is free on Amazon As well, so go ahead and hit "Search on Amazon"

In the middle of the last century, after hearing a talk of Mostow on one of his rigidity theorems, Borel conjectured in a letter to Serre a purely topological version of rigidity for aspherical manifolds (i.e. manifolds with contractible universal covers). The Borel conjecture is now one of the central problems of topology with many implications for manifolds that need not be aspherical. Since then, the theory of rigidity has vastly expanded in both precision and scope. This book rethinks the implications of accepting his heuristic as a source of ideas. Doing so leads to many variants of the original conjecture - some true, some false, and some that remain conjectural. The author explores this collection of ideas, following them where they lead whether into rigidity theory in its differential geometric and representation theoretic forms, or geometric group theory, metric geometry, global analysis, algebraic geometry, K-theory, or controlled topology.

Author(s): Shmuel Weinberger
Series: Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022

Language: English
Pages: 363
City: Cambridge