Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature

Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature PDF Author: Martin R. Bridson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662124947
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
A description of the global properties of simply-connected spaces that are non-positively curved in the sense of A. D. Alexandrov, and the structure of groups which act on such spaces by isometries. The theory of these objects is developed in a manner accessible to anyone familiar with the rudiments of topology and group theory: non-trivial theorems are proved by concatenating elementary geometric arguments, and many examples are given. Part I provides an introduction to the geometry of geodesic spaces, while Part II develops the basic theory of spaces with upper curvature bounds. More specialized topics, such as complexes of groups, are covered in Part III.

Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature

Metric Spaces of Non-Positive Curvature PDF Author: Martin R. Bridson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662124947
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
A description of the global properties of simply-connected spaces that are non-positively curved in the sense of A. D. Alexandrov, and the structure of groups which act on such spaces by isometries. The theory of these objects is developed in a manner accessible to anyone familiar with the rudiments of topology and group theory: non-trivial theorems are proved by concatenating elementary geometric arguments, and many examples are given. Part I provides an introduction to the geometry of geodesic spaces, while Part II develops the basic theory of spaces with upper curvature bounds. More specialized topics, such as complexes of groups, are covered in Part III.

Metric Spaces, Convexity and Nonpositive Curvature

Metric Spaces, Convexity and Nonpositive Curvature PDF Author: Athanase Papadopoulos
Publisher: European Mathematical Society
ISBN: 9783037190104
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description


Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects

Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects PDF Author: Jürgen Jost
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3034889186
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
The present book contains the lecture notes from a "Nachdiplomvorlesung", a topics course adressed to Ph. D. students, at the ETH ZUrich during the winter term 95/96. Consequently, these notes are arranged according to the requirements of organizing the material for oral exposition, and the level of difficulty and the exposition were adjusted to the audience in Zurich. The aim of the course was to introduce some geometric and analytic concepts that have been found useful in advancing our understanding of spaces of nonpos itive curvature. In particular in recent years, it has been realized that often it is useful for a systematic understanding not to restrict the attention to Riemannian manifolds only, but to consider more general classes of metric spaces of generalized nonpositive curvature. The basic idea is to isolate a property that on one hand can be formulated solely in terms of the distance function and on the other hand is characteristic of nonpositive sectional curvature on a Riemannian manifold, and then to take this property as an axiom for defining a metric space of nonposi tive curvature. Such constructions have been put forward by Wald, Alexandrov, Busemann, and others, and they will be systematically explored in Chapter 2. Our focus and treatment will often be different from the existing literature. In the first Chapter, we consider several classes of examples of Riemannian manifolds of nonpositive curvature, and we explain how conditions about nonpos itivity or negativity of curvature can be exploited in various geometric contexts.

Manifolds of Nonpositive Curvature

Manifolds of Nonpositive Curvature PDF Author: Werner Ballmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468491598
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This volume presents a complete and self-contained description of new results in the theory of manifolds of nonpositive curvature. It is based on lectures delivered by M. Gromov at the Collège de France in Paris. Therefore this book may also serve as an introduction to the subject of nonpositively curved manifolds. The latest progress in this area is reflected in the article of W. Ballmann describing the structure of manifolds of higher rank.

Lectures on Spaces of Nonpositive Curvature

Lectures on Spaces of Nonpositive Curvature PDF Author: Werner Ballmann
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3034892403
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Singular spaces with upper curvature bounds and, in particular, spaces of nonpositive curvature, have been of interest in many fields, including geometric (and combinatorial) group theory, topology, dynamical systems and probability theory. In the first two chapters of the book, a concise introduction into these spaces is given, culminating in the Hadamard-Cartan theorem and the discussion of the ideal boundary at infinity for simply connected complete spaces of nonpositive curvature. In the third chapter, qualitative properties of the geodesic flow on geodesically complete spaces of nonpositive curvature are discussed, as are random walks on groups of isometries of nonpositively curved spaces. The main class of spaces considered should be precisely complementary to symmetric spaces of higher rank and Euclidean buildings of dimension at least two (Rank Rigidity conjecture). In the smooth case, this is known and is the content of the Rank Rigidity theorem. An updated version of the proof of the latter theorem (in the smooth case) is presented in Chapter IV of the book. This chapter contains also a short introduction into the geometry of the unit tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold and the basic facts about the geodesic flow. In an appendix by Misha Brin, a self-contained and short proof of the ergodicity of the geodesic flow of a compact Riemannian manifold of negative curvature is given. The proof is elementary and should be accessible to the non-specialist. Some of the essential features and problems of the ergodic theory of smooth dynamical systems are discussed, and the appendix can serve as an introduction into this theory.

Surfaces of Nonpositive Curvature

Surfaces of Nonpositive Curvature PDF Author: Patrick Eberlein
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821822187
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description


Weakly Modular Graphs and Nonpositive Curvature

Weakly Modular Graphs and Nonpositive Curvature PDF Author: Jérémie Chalopin
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470443627
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
This article investigates structural, geometrical, and topological characteri-zations and properties of weakly modular graphs and of cell complexes derived from them. The unifying themes of our investigation are various “nonpositive cur-vature” and “local-to-global” properties and characterizations of weakly modular graphs and their subclasses. Weakly modular graphs have been introduced as a far-reaching common generalization of median graphs (and more generally, of mod-ular and orientable modular graphs), Helly graphs, bridged graphs, and dual polar graphs occurring under different disguises (1–skeletons, collinearity graphs, covering graphs, domains, etc.) in several seemingly-unrelated fields of mathematics: * Metric graph theory * Geometric group theory * Incidence geometries and buildings * Theoretical computer science and combinatorial optimization We give a local-to-global characterization of weakly modular graphs and their sub-classes in terms of simple connectedness of associated triangle-square complexes and specific local combinatorial conditions. In particular, we revisit characterizations of dual polar graphs by Cameron and by Brouwer-Cohen. We also show that (disk-)Helly graphs are precisely the clique-Helly graphs with simply connected clique complexes. With l1–embeddable weakly modular and sweakly modular graphs we associate high-dimensional cell complexes, having several strong topological and geometrical properties (contractibility and the CAT(0) property). Their cells have a specific structure: they are basis polyhedra of even 􀀁–matroids in the first case and orthoscheme complexes of gated dual polar subgraphs in the second case. We resolve some open problems concerning subclasses of weakly modular graphs: we prove a Brady-McCammond conjecture about CAT(0) metric on the orthoscheme.

Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects

Nonpositive Curvature: Geometric and Analytic Aspects PDF Author: Jürgen Jost
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9783764357368
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
The present book contains the lecture notes from a "Nachdiplomvorlesung", a topics course adressed to Ph. D. students, at the ETH ZUrich during the winter term 95/96. Consequently, these notes are arranged according to the requirements of organizing the material for oral exposition, and the level of difficulty and the exposition were adjusted to the audience in Zurich. The aim of the course was to introduce some geometric and analytic concepts that have been found useful in advancing our understanding of spaces of nonpos itive curvature. In particular in recent years, it has been realized that often it is useful for a systematic understanding not to restrict the attention to Riemannian manifolds only, but to consider more general classes of metric spaces of generalized nonpositive curvature. The basic idea is to isolate a property that on one hand can be formulated solely in terms of the distance function and on the other hand is characteristic of nonpositive sectional curvature on a Riemannian manifold, and then to take this property as an axiom for defining a metric space of nonposi tive curvature. Such constructions have been put forward by Wald, Alexandrov, Busemann, and others, and they will be systematically explored in Chapter 2. Our focus and treatment will often be different from the existing literature. In the first Chapter, we consider several classes of examples of Riemannian manifolds of nonpositive curvature, and we explain how conditions about nonpos itivity or negativity of curvature can be exploited in various geometric contexts.

Geometry of Nonpositively Curved Manifolds

Geometry of Nonpositively Curved Manifolds PDF Author: Patrick Eberlein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226181981
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Starting from the foundations, the author presents an almost entirely self-contained treatment of differentiable spaces of nonpositive curvature, focusing on the symmetric spaces in which every geodesic lies in a flat Euclidean space of dimension at least two. The book builds to a discussion of the Mostow Rigidity Theorem and its generalizations, and concludes by exploring the relationship in nonpositively curved spaces between geometric and algebraic properties of the fundamental group. This introduction to the geometry of symmetric spaces of non-compact type will serve as an excellent guide for graduate students new to the material, and will also be a useful reference text for mathematicians already familiar with the subject.

Geometry, Topology, and Dynamics in Negative Curvature

Geometry, Topology, and Dynamics in Negative Curvature PDF Author: C. S. Aravinda
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110752900X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Ten high-quality survey articles provide an overview of important recent developments in the mathematics surrounding negative curvature.