Sobolev bounds and convergence of Riemannian manifolds

Abstract

We consider sequences of compact Riemannian manifolds with uniform Sobolev bounds on their metric tensors, and prove that their distance functions are uniformly bounded in the Hölder sense. This is done by establishing a general trace inequality on Riemannian manifolds which is an interesting result on its own. We provide examples demonstrating how each of our hypotheses are necessary. In the Appendix by the first author with Christina Sormani, we prove that sequences of compact integral current spaces without boundary (including Riemannian manifolds) that have uniform Hölder bounds on their distance functions have subsequences converging in the Gromov--Hausdorff (GH) sense. If in addition they have a uniform upper bound on mass (volume) then they converge in the Sormani--Wenger Intrinsic Flat (SWIF) sense to a limit whose metric completion is the GH limit. We provide an example of a sequence developing a cusp demonstrating why the SWIF and GH limits may not agree.

34 pages, 3 figures, comments welcome. Referee comments addressed. Final version to appear in Nonlinear Analysis. v3: Statement of the main theorems in the appendix corrected so that $\beta =1$