Topologically Rigid (Surgery/Geodesic Flow/Homeomorphism Group/Marked Leaves/Foliated Control) F
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 86, pp. 3461-3463, May 1989 Mathematics Compact negatively curved manifolds (of dim # 3, 4) are topologically rigid (surgery/geodesic flow/homeomorphism group/marked leaves/foliated control) F. T. FARRELLt AND L. E. JONESt tDepartment of Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027; and tDepartment of Mathematics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794 Communicated by William Browder, January 27, 1989 (receivedfor review October 20, 1988) ABSTRACT Let M be a complete (connected) Riemannian COROLLARY 1.3. If M and N are both negatively curved, manifold having finite volume and whose sectional curvatures compact (connected) Riemannian manifolds with isomorphic lie in the interval [cl, c2d with -x < cl c2 < 0. Then any fundamental groups, then M and N are homeomorphic proper homotopy equivalence h:N -* M from a topological provided dim M 4 3 and 4. manifold N is properly homotopic to a homeomorphism, Gromov had previously shown (under the hypotheses of provided the dimension of M is >5. In particular, if M and N Corollary 1.3) that the total spaces of the tangent sphere are both compact (connected) negatively curved Riemannian bundles ofM and N are homeomorphic (even when dim M = manifolds with isomorphic fundamental groups, then M and N 3 or 4) by a homeomorphism preserving the orbits of the are homeomorphic provided dim M # 3 and 4. {If both are geodesic flows, and Cheeger had (even earlier) shown that locally symmetric, this is a consequence of Mostow's rigidity the total spaces of the two-frame bundles of M and N are theorem [Mostow, G.
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