Sharp diameter estimates for compact manifold with boundary

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the geometric structure of compact manifolds with boundary under certain curvature bounds, establishing sharp diameter estimates and conditions for equality to hold, extending results to Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature.

Contribution

It provides a sharp diameter estimate for manifolds with boundary under Ricci curvature bounds and characterizes the equality case as isometric to a hyperbolic ball, extending to Bakry-Émery curvature.

Findings

Equality case characterized as hyperbolic geodesic ball

Sharp diameter bounds established under curvature conditions

Extension to Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature settings

Abstract

Let $(N,g)$ be an $n$-dimensional complete Riemannian manifold with nonempty boundary $\pt N$. Assume that the Ricci curvature of $N$ has a negative lower bound $Ric\geq -(n-1)c^2$ for some $c>0$, and the mean curvature of the boundary $\pt N$ satisfies $H\geq (n-1)c_0>(n-1)c$ for some $c_0>c>0$. Then a known result (see \cite{LN}) says that $\sup_{x\in N}d(x,\pt N)\leq \frac 1c\coth^{-1}\frac{c_0}c$. In this paper, we prove that if the boundary $\pt N$ is compact, then the equality holds if and only if $N$ is isometric to the geodesic ball of radius $\frac 1c\coth^{-1}\frac{c_0}c$ in an $n$-dimensional hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^n(-c^2)$ of constant sectional curvature $-c^2$. Moreover, we also prove an analogous result for manifold with nonempty boundary and with $m$-Bakry-\'{E}mery Ricci curvature bounded below by a negative constant.