Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Compactifications Of Manifolds With Boundary, Shijie Gu

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with compactifications of high-dimensional manifolds.

Siebenmann's iconic 1965 dissertation \cite{Sie65} provided necessary and

sufficient conditions for an open manifold $M^{m}$ ($m\geq6$) to be

compactifiable by addition of a manifold boundary. His theorem extends easily

to cases where $M^{m}$ is noncompact with compact boundary; however when

$\partial M^{m}$ is noncompact, the situation is more complicated. The goal

becomes a \textquotedblleft completion\textquotedblright\ of $M^{m}$, ie, a

compact manifold $\widehat{M}^{m}$ containing a compactum $A\subseteq\partial

M^{m}$ such that $\widehat{M}^{m}\backslash A\approx M^{m}$. Siebenmann did

some initial work on this topic, and O'Brien \cite{O'B83} extended that work

to an important special case. …

Z-Structures And Semidirect Products With An Infinite Cyclic Group, Brian Walter Pietsch

Theses and Dissertations

Z-structures were originally formulated by Bestvina in order to axiomatize the properties that an ideal group boundary should have. In this dissertation, we prove that if a given group admits a Z-structure, then any semidirect product of that group with an infinite cyclic group will also admit a Z-structure. We then show how this can be applied to 3-manifold groups and strongly polycyclic groups.