Gromov's waist comparison conjecture for positively curved Riemannian manifolds

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Let XX be an nn-dimensional Riemannian manifold with sectional curvature K≥1K\geq 1, and let f:X→Rkf:X\to\mathbb{R}^k be a continuous map. For a subset Y⊂XY\subset X, write Y+ε={x∈X∣d(x,Y)≤ε}Y+\varepsilon=\{x\in X\mid d(x,Y)\leq\varepsilon\}. Let Sn\mathbb{S}^n denote the canonical Riemannian nn-sphere with sectional curvature equal to 11. Gromov's conjecture. There exists z∈Rkz\in\mathbb{R}^k such that, for every ε>0\varepsilon>0,

vol⁡n(f−1(z)+ε)vol⁡n(X)≥vol⁡n(Sn−k+ε)vol⁡n(Sn).\frac{\operatorname{vol}_n(f^{-1}(z)+\varepsilon)}{\operatorname{vol}_n(X)}\geq \frac{\operatorname{vol}_n(\mathbb{S}^{n-k}+\varepsilon)}{\operatorname{vol}_n(\mathbb{S}^n)}.

This is a waist comparison asserting that positively curved Riemannian manifolds have normalized fiber-neighborhood volume at least that of the unit round sphere. The source notes that the conjecture is proved when XX is itself the canonical Riemannian sphere; the general case, particularly for positive ε\varepsilon, remains open.

References

Primary source

Yashar Memarian, “A Note on the Geometry of Positively-Curved Riemannian Manifolds”, arXiv:1312.0792 (2013).

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