An Invitation to Alexandrov Geometry: CAT(0) Spaces

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An Invitation to Alexandrov Geometry: CAT(0) Spaces An invitation to Alexandrov geometry: CAT(0) spaces Stephanie Alexander, Vitali Kapovitch, Anton Petrunin Contents 1 Preliminaries5 1.1 Metric spaces........................5 1.2 Constructions........................6 1.3 Geodesics, triangles, and hinges..............7 1.4 Length spaces........................8 1.5 Model angles and triangles................. 11 1.6 Angles and the first variation............... 13 1.7 Space of directions and tangent space.......... 15 1.8 Hausdorff convergence................... 16 1.9 Gromov–Hausdorff convergence.............. 17 2 Gluing theorem and billiards 21 2.1 The 4-point condition................... 21 2.2 Thin triangles........................ 22 2.3 Reshetnyak’s gluing theorem............... 26 2.4 Reshetnyak puff pastry................... 28 2.5 Wide corners........................ 31 2.6 Billiards........................... 33 2.7 Comments.......................... 36 3 Globalization and asphericity 37 3.1 Locally CAT spaces.................... 37 3.2 Space of local geodesic paths............... 38 3.3 Globalization........................ 40 3.4 Polyhedral spaces...................... 44 3.5 Flag complexes....................... 46 3.6 Cubical complexes..................... 48 3.7 Exotic aspherical manifolds................ 49 3.8 Comments.......................... 52 iii iv CONTENTS 4 Subsets 55 4.1 Motivating examples.................... 55 4.2 Two-convexity........................ 56 4.3 Sets with smooth boundary................ 60 4.4 Open plane sets....................... 62 4.5 Shefel’s theorem...................... 63 4.6 Polyhedral case....................... 65 4.7 Two-convex hulls...................... 67 4.8 Proof of Shefel’s theorem................. 69 4.9 Comments.......................... 70 Semisolutions 73 Preface This short monograph arose as an offshoot of the book on Alexan- drov geometry we have been writing for a number of years. The notes were shaped in a number of lectures given by the third author to un- dergraduate students at different occasions at the MASS program at Penn State University and the Summer School “Algebra and Geome- try” in Yaroslavl. The idea is to demonstrate the beauty and power of Alexandrov geometry by reaching interesting applications and theorems with a minimum of preparation. Namely, we consider CAT(0) spaces — the metric spaces with nonpositive curvature in the sense of Alexandrov; these spaces can be loosely described as a non-linear generalization of a Hilbert space. In Chapter1, we discuss necessary preliminaries. In Chapter2, we discuss the Reshetnyak gluing theorem and apply it to a problem in billiards which was solved by Dmitri Burago, Serge Ferleger, and Alexey Kononenko. In Chapter3, we discuss the Hadamard–Cartan globalization the- orem, and apply it to the construction of exotic aspherical manifolds introduced by Michael Davis. In Chapter4, we discuss examples of Alexandrov spaces with cur- vature bounded above. This chapter is based largely on work of Samuel Shefel on nonsmooth saddle surfaces. Here is a list of some sources providing a good introduction to Alexandrov spaces with curvature bounded above, which we recom- mend for further information; we will not assume familiarity with any of these sources. The book by Martin Bridson and André Haefliger [18]; Lecture notes of Werner Ballmann [13]; Chapter 9 in the book [20] by Dmitri Burago, Yuri Burago and Sergei Ivanov. 1 2 CONTENTS Early history of Alexandov geometry The idea that the essence of curvature lies in a condition on quadruples of points apparently originated with Abraham Wald. It is found in his publication on “coordinate-free differential geometry” [68] written un- der the supervision of Karl Menger; the story of this discovery can be found in [45]. In 1941, similar definitions were rediscovered indepen- dently by Alexandr Danilovich Alexandrov, see [7]. In Alexandrov’s work the first fruitful applications of this approach were given. Mainly: Alexandrov’s embedding theorem — metrics of non-negative curvature on the sphere, and only they, are isometric to closed convex surfaces in Euclidean 3-space. Gluing theorem, which tells when the sphere obtained by gluing of two discs along their boundaries has non-negative curvature in the sense of Alexandrov. These two results together gave a very intuitive geometric tool for studying embeddings and bending of surfaces in Euclidean space, and changed this subject dramatically. They formed the foundation of the branch of geometry now called Alexandrov geometry. The study of spaces with curvature bounded above started later. The first paper on the subject was written by Alexandrov; it appeared in 1951, see [8]. It was based on work of Herbert Busemann, who studied spaces satisfying a weaker condition [25]. Yurii Grigorievich Reshetnyak proved fundamental results about general spaces with curvature bounded above, the most important of which is his gluing theorem. An equally important theorem is the Hadamard–Cartan theorem (globalization theorem). These theorems and their history are discussed in chapters2 and3. Surfaces with upper curvature bounds were studied extensively in the 50-s and 60-s, and are by now well understood; see the survey [59] and the references therein. Manifesto of Alexandrov geometry Alexandrov geometry can use “back to Euclid” as a slogan. Alexandrov spaces are defined via axioms similar to those given by Euclid, but certain equalities are changed to inequalities. Depending on the sign of the inequalities, we get Alexandrov spaces with curvature bounded above or curvature bounded below. The definitions of the two classes of spaces are similar, but their properties and known applications are quite different. Consider the space M4 of all isometry classes of 4-point metric spaces. Each element in M4 can be described by 6 numbers — the CONTENTS 3 distances between all 6 pairs of its points, say `i;j for 1 6 i < j 6 4 modulo permutations of the index set (1; 2; 3; 4). These 6 numbers are subject to 12 triangle inequalities; that is, `i;j + `j;k > `i;k holds for all i, j and k, where we assume that `j;i = `i;j and `i;i = 0. Consider the subset E4 ⊂ M4 of all isometry classes of 4-point metric spaces that admit isomet- ric embeddings into Euclidean N4 E4 P4 space. The complement M4nE4 has two connected components. 0.0.1. Exercise. Prove the lat- M4 ter statement. One of the components will be denoted by P4 and the other by N4. Here P and N stand for positive and negative curvature because spheres have no quadruples of type N4 and hyperbolic space has no quadruples of type P4. A metric space, with length metric, that has no quadruples of points of type P4 or N4 respectively is called an Alexandrov space with non-positive or non-negative curvature. Here is an exercise, solving which would force the reader to rebuild a considerable part of Alexandrov geometry. 0.0.2. Advanced exercise. Assume X is a complete metric space with length metric, containing only quadruples of type E4. Show that X is isometric to a convex set in a Hilbert space. In fact, it might be helpful to spend some time thinking about this exercise before proceeding. In the definition above, instead of Euclidean space one can take hy- perbolic space of curvature −1. In this case, one obtains the definition of spaces with curvature bounded above or below by −1. To define spaces with curvature bounded above or below by 1, one has to take the unit 3-sphere and specify that only the quadruples of points such that each of the four triangles has perimeter less than 2·π are checked. The latter condition could be considered as a part of the spherical triangle inequality. Acknowledgment We want to thank David Berg, Richard Bishop, Yurii Burago, Maxime Fortier Bourque, Sergei Ivanov, Michael Kapovich, Bernd Kirchheim, 4 CONTENTS Bruce Kleiner, Nikolai Kosovsky, Greg Kuperberg, Nina Lebedeva, John Lott, Alexander Lytchak, Dmitri Panov, Stephan Stadler, Wil- derich Tuschmann, and Sergio Zamora Barrera for a number of dis- cussions and suggestions. We thank the mathematical institutions where we worked on this material, including BIRS, MFO, Henri Poincaré Institute, University of Colone, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics. The first author was partially supported by the Simons Founda- tion grant #209053. The second author was partially supported by a Discovery grant from NSERC and by the Simons Foundation grant #390117. The third author was partially supported by the NSF grant DMS 1309340 and the Simons Foundation #584781. Chapter 1 Preliminaries In this chapter we fix some conventions and recall the main definitions. The chapter may be used as a quick reference when reading the book. To learn background in metric geometry, the reader may consult the book of Dmitri Burago, Yuri Burago, and Sergei Ivanov [20]. 1.1 Metric spaces The distance between two points x and y in a metric space X will be denoted by jx − yj or jx − yjX . The latter notation is used if we need to emphasize that the distance is taken in the space X . The function distx : y 7! jx − yj is called the distance function from x. The diameter of a metric space X is defined as diam X = supf jx − yjX : x; y 2 X g : Given R 2 [0; 1] and x 2 X , the sets B(x; R) = fy 2 X j jx − yj < Rg; B[x; R] = fy 2 X j jx − yj 6 Rg are called, respectively, the open and the closed balls of ra- dius R with center x. Again, if we need to emphasize that these balls are taken in the metric space X , we write B(x; R)X and B[x; R]X : 5 6 CHAPTER 1. PRELIMINARIES A metric space X is called proper if all closed bounded sets in X are compact. This condition is equivalent to each of the following statements: 1. For some (and therefore any) point p 2 X and any R < 1, the closed ball B[p; R] ⊂ X is compact. 2. The function distp : X! R is proper for some (and therefore any) point p 2 X ; that is, for any compact set K ⊂ R, its inverse image f x 2 X : jp − xjX 2 K g is compact.
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