The universal cover of an affine three-manifold with holonomy of shrinkable dimension $\leq 2$
Abstract
Description
An affine manifold is a manifold with an affine structure, i.e. a torsion-free flat affine connection. We show that the universal cover of a closed affine 3-manifold $M$ with holonomy group of shrinkable dimension (or discompacité in French) less than or equal to two is diffeomorphic to $\bR^3$. Hence, $M$ is irreducible. This follows from two results: (i) a simply connected affine 3-manifold which is 2-convex is diffeomorphic to $\bR^3$, whose proof using the Morse theory takes most of this paper; and (ii) a closed affine manifold of holonomy of shrinkable dimension less or equal to $d$ is $d$-convex. To prove (i), we show that 2-convexity is a geometric form of topological incompressibility of level sets. As a consequence, we show that the universal cover of a closed affine three-manifold with parallel volume form is diffeomorphic to $\bR^3$, a part of the weak Markus conjecture. As applications, we show that the universal cover of a hyperbolic 3-manifold with cone-type singularity of arbitrarily assigned cone-angles along a link removed with the singular locus is diffeomorphic to $\bR^3$. A fake cell has an affine structure as shown by Gromov. Such a cell must have a concave point at the boundary.
67 pages, 27 figures, some revisions. To appear in the International Journal Of Mathematics
67 pages, 27 figures, some revisions. To appear in the International Journal Of Mathematics