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LGROMOV:
HOW DOES HEDO I
T?
byJ
e f
fCheeger
From Gromov’s Abel Prize Citation:
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Further influence, broad view point.
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Early influences.
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The h-principle.
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A startling application.
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Almost flat manifolds.
diam(M n, η 2 · g) → 0 ,
and the curvature blows up.
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By the 1960’s, members of the Russian
school were aware that there exist com-
pact smooth manifolds with the following
startling properties:
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The 3-dimensional Heisenberg group.
0 1 λb
0 0 1
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Equip H with a Riemannian metric which
is right-invariant and hence, has bounded
curvature.
As λ → 0,
diam(H/Γλ) ∼ λ → 0 ,
while the curvature stays bounded.
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diam(H/Γλ) ∼ λ2 → 0,
|KM n | ∼ λ → 0 .
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By the early 1970’s Gromov had proved a
striking converse:
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Remark: In 1982, E. Ruh, introduced an-
alytic techniques into the discussion and
made the nature of the finite covering pre-
cise (as had been suggested by Gromov).
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Arrival in Stony Brook, 1974.
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Already visible characteristics.
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Pronouncements worth pondering.
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Oral communication:
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From “Spaces and questions”.
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Oral communication:
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Continuation of the discussion from “Spaces
and questions”.
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From “Stability and pinching”.
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Oral communication (concerning the Gromov-
Hausdorff distance):
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Structural thinking versus technique.
Oral communication:
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Dennis Sullivan (oral communication):
He computes by logic.”
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Soft and hard structures.
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J-holomorphic curves.
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Gromov revolutionized symplectic geome-
try by introducing elliptic methods which
“hardened” or “rigidified” the structure.
ω(x, y) = g(Jx, y) .
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Let J1 denote the standard complex struc-
ture on C and let f : C → M 2n.
df ◦ J1 = J ◦ df ,
has the same linearization as that of the
Cauchy-Riemann operator for maps
f : C → Cn .
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The “nonsqueezing” theorem.
f ∗(ω) = ω ,
then
r < R.
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The Gromov-Hausdorff distance.
RicM n = λ · g .
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Definition.
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Inuition.
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Gromov’s compactness theorem.
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Theorem. The collection, X (d, N (ǫ)), is
compact with respect to the topology in-
duced by dGH .
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Ricci curvature bounded below.
RicM n ≥ (n − 1)H · g .
Here,
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Let M(d, H, n) denote the collection of isom-
etry classes of Riemannian manifolds M n,
with
diam(M n) ≤ d ,
RicM n ≥ (n − 1)H · g .
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Application to potential bad behavior.
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In favorable cases be able to conclude that
the putative arbitrarily badly behaving se-
quence could not have existed.
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However.
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An exception that proves the rule.
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The Betti number estimate.
i=0
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Critical points of distance functions.
distp(x) := dist(x, p) ,
are, of course Lipschitz, but need not be
smooth.
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When Misha announced that he had used
the Grove-Shiohama technique to obtain
the Betti number estimate, I was stunned,
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This proves that no one is perfect!
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