Saturday, 14 July 2012

dg.differential geometry - When is a Riemannian manifold an open subset of a complete one?

This isn't an answer its a conjecture. Nice question.



Suppose that M,N are a Riemannian manifolds and MsubsetN is an open subset and N is complete. Lets assume that M is path connected, so that there is no funny business in defining
the distance between p,qinM to be the infimum of the length of a path joining p to q.
Also lets assume that that path metric is bounded, so you don't have infinite ends.



There is a map from the metric space completion of M into N and its image will be the closure of M in N. There is now a plethora
of obstructions to the embedding, derived from this map.



For instance:
Let CI(overlineM) be those continuous functions on the metric space completion of M whose restriction to M is smooth. Let I be the ideal of all functions in CI(overlineM) that vanish at a point p of the completion. It should be the case that T=(I/I2) is isomorphic to mathbbRn where n is the dimension of the manifold. Next, the metric tensor should extend to the completion, where you interpret it a point at infinity as a tensor on T, and its coefficients should be elements of CI(overlineM). Next you should be able to extend the Riemann curvature tensor appropriately as a map from the tensor square of T to itself, and the coefficients of the extension should also be in CI(overlineM) and they should satisfy all the restrictions on the tensor that the Riemann curvature tensor of a smooth manifold satisfies.



Here is my conjecture : The condition above is necessary and sufficient. The reason is you should be able to build a candidate piece of the manifold N with normal coordinates, and those normal coordinate patches should glue together coherently.

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