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Athanase Papadopoulos Editor
Surveys in
Geometry I
Surveys in Geometry I
Athanase Papadopoulos
Editor
Surveys in Geometry I
Editor
Athanase Papadopoulos
Institut de Recherche Mathématique
Avancée
Université de Strasbourg et CNRS
Strasbourg, France
Mathematics Subject Classification: 30F10, 30F60, 32G15, 53C70, 51K05, 53A35, 57M60, 52B60,
30F10, 30F60, 32G15, 53C70, 51K05, 53A35, 57M60, 52B60
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This is the first of a two-volume set of surveys on geometry in the broad sense
(including group actions and topology). The surveys vary in their scope and degree
of difficulty, but they all represent current research trends.
In planning this book, I naturally wanted to promote topics that I personally
like. Some chapters involve only classical mathematics (e.g., geometry of finite-
dimensional vector spaces and spherical geometry), while others are concerned with
more recent topics (e.g., Gromov-hyperbolic spaces and Teichmüller spaces), but
my personal feeling is that in the end there is little difference between classical
and modern, or between elementary and advanced mathematics; all the ideas, old
and new, are interrelated, and they form one single subject, geometry. Some of the
surveys in this volume are based on lectures that were given by their authors to
students who are at a middle-advanced level. In particular, three surveys consist of
polished notes of lectures given at a CIMPA thematic school that I co-organized
with Bankteshwar Tiwari in 2019, at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.
Other notes associated with lectures delivered at the same school will appear in the
second volume.
When I asked the authors to write a survey for this collection, I knew what to
expect in terms of content, but I emphasized the fact that the goal is to give the
reader a real introduction to the subject, in an attractive way. Most of the authors
succeeded in this, and I take this opportunity to thank them all for their contribution.
My thanks also go to Elena Griniari, from Springer, for her support.
v
Contents
1 Introduction .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Athanase Papadopoulos
2 Spherical Geometry—A Survey on Width and Thickness of
Convex Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Marek Lassak
3 Minkowski Geometry—Some Concepts and Recent
Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Vitor Balestro and Horst Martini
4 Orthogonality Types in Normed Linear Spaces . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Javier Alonso, Horst Martini, and Senlin Wu
5 Convex Bodies: Mixed Volumes and Inequalities . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Ivan Izmestiev
6 Compactness and Finiteness Results for Gromov-Hyperbolic
Spaces . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Gérard Besson and Gilles Courtois
7 All 4-Dimensional Smooth Schoenflies Balls Are
Geometrically Simply-Connected .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Valentin Poénaru
8 Classical Differential Topology and Non-commutative Geometry . . . . 309
Valentin Poénaru
9 A Short Introduction to Translation Surfaces, Veech
Surfaces, and Teichmüller Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Daniel Massart
vii
viii Contents
Index . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Contributors
ix
About the Editor
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
Athanase Papadopoulos
The present volume of surveys covers a large spectrum of current research topics
in geometry in a broad sense, including spherical geometry, infinitesimal geometry
(Riemannian and Finsler), metric spaces à la Gromov, Busemann spaces, convexity,
singular flat structures on surfaces and their dynamics, Teichmüller spaces, Cartan
geometries and generalizations, and the topology of 4-manifolds.
The first survey is concerned with the analogue in spherical geometry of a theory
that was previously developed in the Euclidean setting. Working on such a subject
follows the tradition of a series of efforts made by a number of mathematicians to
adapt to a non-Euclidean setting notions and results that were known previously
in Euclidean geometry. Among these authors, let me mention Leonhard Euler, who
published a series of memoirs in which he presented theorems in spherical geometry
that are analogues of results (some of which are classical and others due to him)
that hold in the Euclidean setting. The next two surveys are concerned with the
geometry of Minkowski spaces (finite-dimensional normed vector spaces). Again,
the results are inspired by analogous results that hold in Euclidean vector spaces.
Then comes a survey on convexity theory, and more precisely on the theory of
mixed volumes for convex bodies in Euclidean space. The goal of the next survey
is to give a set of comparison results and finiteness theorems, in the setting of
A. Papadopoulos ()
Université de Strasbourg and CNRS, Strasbourg, France
e-mail: [email protected]
metric geometry (more precisely, Gromov hyperbolic spaces), that are analogues
of classical results that hold for Riemannian manifolds. The next two surveys are of
a topological character. A series of techniques are surveyed there, aimed to tackle
classical problems in topology that are related to the 4-dimensional Schoenflies
problem. Translation surfaces with their dynamics, a theory which generalizes in
a very nontrivial manner the classical dynamics of linear flows on the Euclidean
torus, constitute the subject of the next survey. This is followed by a survey which
is concerned with rigidity theorems in Teichmüller spaces, equipped with their two
most important Finsler metrics: the Teichmüller metric and the Thurston metric.
The last survey in this volume is concerned with higher-dimensional complex
geometry, and more especially, with generalizations of classical G-structures and
Cartan geometries.
Each chapter is an illustration of how current research problems and novel
theories are strongly rooted in classical mathematics.
In the rest of this introduction, I review in more detail the content of each of these
chapters.
Chapter 2, by Marek Lassak, is titled Spherical Geometry—A Survey on Width
and Thickness of Convex Bodies. It is a study of the geometry of convex bodies in
d-dimensional spheres. The author develops the spherical analogue of the theory of
width and thickness of convex bodies in Euclidean space. Supporting hemispheres
and lunes play the same role as support hyperplanes and half-spaces in the Euclidean
setting. Among the topics considered in the spherical case, we mention the notions
of diameter, perimeter, circumradius, area, extreme point, reduced body, body of
constant diameter, complete body and body of constant width. The chapter contains
several examples and open questions.
Chapter 3, by Vitor Balestro and Horst Martini, titled Minkowski Geometry—
Some Concepts and Recent Developments, is an introduction to Minkowski geome-
try, that is, the geometry of finite-dimensional normed spaces. The authors study
triangles and the notions of orthocenter, circumcenter, circumradius, Euler line,
Monge point and several others, in a general Minkowski space. They also survey
area and volume, regular polygons, the geometry of circles and that of systems
of circles, Feuerbach circles, equilateral sets and the equilateral dimension of a
normed space, and they review Minkowskian analogues of results on intersections of
circles associated with triangles and circle patterns in the Euclidean plane. They give
several characterizations of Euclidean planes among normed planes. Orthogonality
in Minskowski spaces, also considered in this chapter, is studied in more detail in
the next one. In dimension 2, the notion of anti-norm leads to that of Radon plane
(this is the case where the anti-norm is a multiple of the norm, or, equivalently, when
Birkhoff orthogonality is symmetric).
In the same chapter, the authors study the differential geometry of curves in
Minkowski planes, in particular the notions of Minkowski curvature, radius of
curvature, circular curvature, normal curvature, arclength curvature and curves of
constant width. They survey the differential geometry of surfaces, extending to the
Minkowski setting classical notions such as the Gauss map, principal curvature,
Gaussian curvature, mean curvature, normal curvature, umbilic, Dupin indicatrix,
1 Introduction 3
Dupin metric, minimal surface and girth. They also review Busemann’s work on
isoperimetric problems. Finally, they study billiards in arbitrary convex bodies, a
topic which they call Minkowski billiards. The chapter contains a number of open
problems.
In Chapter 4, authored by Javier Alonso, Horst Martini and Senlin Wu and titled
Orthogonality Types in Normed Linear Spaces, the authors review a large number
of notions of orthogonality in normed vector spaces that generalize the classical
notion of orthogonality in the Euclidean plane or in inner product spaces. Among
the notions of orthogonality that are discussed, we mention Roberts orthogonality,
Birkhoff orthogonality, James or isosceles orthogonality, Pythagorean orthogonal-
ity, Carlsson orthogonality, and there are several others. Symmetry, additivity and
other properties of the various notions of orthogonality are discussed. Naturally,
several characterizations of inner product spaces are obtained. Like in the previous
chapter, a certain number of open problems are discussed.
Chapter 5, by Ivan Izmestiev, is titled Convex Bodies: Mixed Volumes and
Inequalities. The author is motivated by the natural question: How does the volume
of a convex set belonging to a certain class depend on the variables defining it? It
turns out that for what concerns volume of convex bodies, an interesting object to
study is the family of r-neighborhoods of such a body for variable r. A formula
attributed to Jakob Steiner says that the volume of the r-neighborhood of a compact
convex body in Euclidean d-space is a degree-d polynomial in r. In fact, two
original versions of this formula were obtained by Steiner: they concern polytopes
and smooth convex bodies in R3 respectively. The first one involves parameters
such as edge lengths and exterior angles, and the second one involves area and the
principal curvatures of the boundary. Izmestiev, in Chap. 5, reviews these formulae
and their n-dimensional generalizations, leading to the notion of general Steiner
polynomial which establishes a relation between volume and the average volumes
of projections of the convex body to lower-dimensional subspaces. He surveys
several geometrical concepts such as average width and total mean curvature and he
presents n-dimensional generalizations of classical formulae attributed to Cauchy
and Crofton. At the same time, the chapter contains an introduction to some basic
notions in convexity theory, starting with elementary concepts such as support
hyperplane, support function, Minkowski functional, Minkowski sum, the Blaschke
selection theorem, the Hausdorff metric on the space of convex bodies and the
volume function on this space, and continuing with more involved topics such as
mixed volumes and their properties (mixed volume inequalities) and in particular the
Alexandrov–Fenchel and Minkowski inequalities that establish relations between
the volume of the Minkowski sum of two compact convex subsets of Rn and the
volumes of the original two subsets. The author also reviews properties of the
Steiner symmetrization of convex bodies, the Blaschke–Santalo inequality and a
related conjecture by Mahler involving the volume of the polar dual of a convex
body. He mentions the relation with isoperimetric inequalities and the spectrum of
the Laplacian.
Chapter 6, by Gérard Besson and Gilles Courtois, is titled Compactness and
Finiteness Results for Gromov-Hyperbolic Spaces. It is a survey of recent results
4 A. Papadopoulos
obtained by the authors together with Sylvestre Gallot and Andrea Sambusetti in
which they give analogues, in the setting of Gromov-hyperbolic metric spaces, of
classical results due to Bishop and Gromov on the growth of balls in Riemannian
manifolds with bounds on their Ricci curvature or on their entropy. The conclusion
in the results of Bishop and Gromov is formulated as a comparison property: under
the curvature bound condition, the volume of a ball of a certain radius at an arbitrary
point is compared with the volume of a ball of the same radius in a simply-connected
Riemannian manifold of constant sectional curvature. Important consequences of
the main results in the Gromov-hyperbolic setting are obtained in the form of
compactness and finiteness theorems.
In this chapter, the reader is led progressively from elementary notions to deep
results in geometry and topology, illustrating important relations between these
two fields and in particular the restrictions that geometry imposes on topology.
The background material presented includes an introduction to Gromov-hyperbolic
spaces equipped with measures and with isometric group actions, entropy in metric
spaces, CAT(0)-spaces, families of metric spaces endowed with Gromov–Hausdorff
distances, Busemann metric spaces, marked groups, growth of groups, the Margulis
Lemma concerning thin-thick decompositions of manifolds, and systoles.
The next two surveys (Chaps. 7 and 8) are by Valentin Poénaru. Before describing
their content, I would like to say a few words on the notion of geometric simple
connectivity which plays a central role there.
A manifold (of arbitrary dimension, compact or not, possibly with or without
boundary) is said to be geometrically simply connected if it admits a proper Morse
function with no critical points of Morse index 1. Such a notion can also be defined
in the combinatorial category, although it is more complicated to state there; it uses a
handlebody decomposition, and it is a property of the relative positions of 1- and 2-
handles. Roughly speaking, it says that “2-handles cancel 1-handles,” a property that
appears in Smale’s proof of the high-dimensional Poincaré conjecture. Geometric
simple connectivity implies simple connectivity in the usual sense (triviality of
the fundamental group). The converse statement involves delicate questions, and
in all generality it is false; for instance, it is known that it is false in dimension 4,
and it is also false for noncompact manifolds with nonempty boundary. But this
converse is true for instance in the case of compact manifolds of dimension ≥5,
by a result of Smale, a fact which was a crucial step in the latter’s proof of the
high-dimensional Poincaré conjecture. It is also true in dimension 3, by Perelman’s
proof of the Poincaré conjecture in this dimension. Poénaru has developed during
several decades an approach to the 3-dimensional Poincaré conjecture based on 4-
dimensional topological constructions which involve in a crucial way the notion of
geometric simple connectivity for smooth 4-manifolds.
Chapter 7 is titled All 4-Dimensional Smooth Schoenflies Balls Are Geometrically
Simply-Connected—A Fast Survey of the Proof. We recall that a Schoenflies ball is
any one of the two compact bounded smooth manifolds into which an arbitrary
smooth embedding of the sphere S n−1 into S n divides the S n . Poénaru gives in
this chapter a survey of the main steps of the proof of the result stated in the
title. The 4-dimensional smooth Schoenflies problem is in the background. This
problem asks whether any smooth 3-dimensional submanifold of the 4-sphere
1 Introduction 5
which is diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere separates it into two 4-manifolds that are
both diffeomorphic to the 4-ball. The question is motivated by an analogue in
dimension two, where one form of the Schoenflies theorem says that for any simple
closed curve in a 2-sphere, any complementary component of this curve union the
curve itself is homeomorphic to a closed disc. Without further restrictions, the n-
dimensional analogue of this theorem is false.
The same author, in Chap. 8, titled Classical Differential Topology and Non-
commutative Geometry, starts by reviewing some standard constructions in the
theory of smooth 4-manifolds, in particular, spaces that are not geometrically
simply connected. He then surveys some connections between various notions in the
geometry and topology of 4-manifolds. This work is part of the author’s project of
understanding the structure at infinity of noncompact smooth 4-manifolds with non-
empty boundary. He promotes the idea that these spaces lead to non-commutative
spaces in the sense of Connes and that this theory leads to interesting questions in
geometric group theory.
Chapter 9, by Daniel Massart, is titled A Short Introduction to Translation
Surfaces, Veech Surfaces and Teichmüller Dynamics. The author starts with an
exposition of some basic background material, namely, the various ways in which
translation surfaces are defined: planar polygons with sides pairwise identified by
translations, atlases with appropriate transition maps, holomorphic (or Abelian) dif-
ferentials, etc. Half-translation surfaces are associated with quadratic differentials.
Each definition of a translation surface emphasizes a particular point of view on
this theory (combinatorial, geometric or complex-analytic). A translation surface
has an associated flow, defined outside the singular locus. The point of view of
Abelian differential induces another flow parametrized by the circle, namely, turning
the differential by an angle θ ∈ [0, 2π]. The existence of these two dynamical
systems leads to the familiar questions of counting the periodic orbits, studying their
distribution, describing associated invariant measures, etc. After reviewing these
questions, Massart surveys properties that are more specific to translation surfaces,
such as the Veech dichotomy: each direction is either completely periodic (all orbits
are periodic or saddle connections) or uniquely ergodic (all infinite trajectories
are uniformly distributed). An important question is to find classes of surfaces
satisfying this dichotomy. The author then introduces the notions of moduli space of
translation surfaces, of local coordinates given by the relative periods of the Abelian
differentials that define them, and of the stratification of this moduli space by the
type of zeroes of the differentials. He discusses relations with Teichmüller spaces
and with the geodesic flow on moduli spaces. He surveys the basic properties of
Teichmüller discs equipped with their GL+ 2 (R) and Veech group actions and he
reports on McMullen’s classification of GL+ 2 (R)-orbit closures in genus two. The
chapter ends with some notes on what is known in higher genus.
Chapter 10 by Ken’ichi Ohshika is titled Teichmüller Spaces and the Rigidity
of Mapping Class Action. The author reviews several rigidity theorems, first in
the setting of the classical Teichmüller metric, and then in the setting of the more
recently introduced Thurston asymmetric metric. He starts with Royden’s theorem
stating that every isometry of Teichmüller space equipped with its Teichmüller
6 A. Papadopoulos
Again, just as the whole scheme suggests King Lear, so does the
simple vigour of Theseus’ words,[373] when he enters at the terrific
close amid the bellowing of the unnatural tempest:—
works with which he won his victory[385] over Æschylus, and it bore
marks of the older writer’s influence. The theme is the mission of
Triptolemus, who traversed the earth distributing to men corn, the
gift of Demeter, and founded the mysteries at Eleusis. This topic
gave room for a long geographical passage which recalls those of
the Prometheus. Other early dramas were the Thamyras in which
the dramatist himself took the name-part and played the cithara,
and the Nausicaa or Women Washing wherein Sophocles acted the
part of that princess and gained applause by his skill in a game of
ball. The satyric drama Amphiaraus contained a curious scene
wherein an illiterate man conveyed some name or other word to his
hearers by a dance in which his contortions represented successive
letters. Another satyric play The Mustering of the Greeks (Ἀχαιῶν
Σύλλογος) or the Dinner-Party (Σύνδειπνοι) earned the reprobation
of Cicero[386] apparently for its coarseness, which can still be noted
in the fragments. In The Lovers of Achilles (Ἀχιλλέως ἐρασταί) there
was a passage describing the perplexity of passion, which in its
mannered felicity recalls Swinburne or the Sonnets of Shakespeare:
—
The dull repetition of πρὸς τοῦτο and of ἄν; the extremely slow
movement of the penultimate line with its three spondees and the
word-ending at the close of the second foot; above all, the manner
in which the whole dragging sentence leads up to the monosyllable
ἄν, so rare at the end of a sentence, and there stops dead, is a
marvellous suggestion of the lame man’s painful progress and of the
way in which at the end of his endurance he falls prone and spent
upon the object of his endeavour.
Specially striking phrases are not common. Sophocles obtains his
effect not by brilliant strokes of diction, but by the cumulative effect
of a sustained manner. There are such dexterities of course, like
Antigone’s πόθος τοι καὶ κακῶν ἄρ’ ἦν τις,[405] and the cry of Electra
to her brother’s ashes:—[406]
More personal, but instinct with the same glow of imaginative beauty
is the soliloquy[409] of Ajax when at the point of death. It is in
passages like these that one realizes the value of the restraint which
obtains elsewhere; when the author gives his voice full scope the
effect is heartshaking. Ajax’ appeal to the sun-god to “check his
gold-embossed rein” fills with splendour at a word the heavens
which were lowering with horror. It recalls Marlowe’s lines of the
same type and effect though in different application, which suffuse
the agony of Faust with bitter glory:—