Self-Covering, finiteness, and fibering over a circle

Abstract

A topological space is called self-covering if it is a nontrivial cover of itself. We prove that a closed self-covering manifold $M$ with free abelian fundamental group fibers over a circle under certain assumptions. In particular, we give a complete answer to the question whether a self-covering manifold with fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$ is a fiber bundle over $S^1$, except for the $4$-dimensional smooth case. As an algebraic Hilfssatz, we develop a criterion for finite generation of modules over a commutative Noetherian ring. We also construct examples of self-covering manifolds with non-free abelian fundamental group, which are not fiber bundles over $S^1$

arXiv commentDedicated to Francis Thomas Farrell on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Final version, to appear on Transactions of the American Mathematical Society