Discrete groups and geometry of ideal boundary

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The purpose of this project was to investigate the stability/rigidity of discrete groups from the viewpoint of geometry of the ideal boundary of negatively curved spaces and the cohomology of deiscrete groups. Our main result is summarized as follows.Let Γ be a Kleinian group acting on n-sphere. If Γ is convex cocompact, the quotient of the domain of discontinuity is compact by definition. However, the converse is not true in general. Izeki (head investigator) showed that if the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set of Γ is less than n/2 and the quotient of the domain of discontinuity is compact, then Γ is convex cocompact. As a consequence, such a Γ is quasiconformally stable. We also gave several applications to topology and geometry of conformally flat manifolds with positive scalar curvature.In case the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set is less than (n-2)/2, we found a proof using the index theorem for higher A^^<^>-genus. We applied the index theorem to the quotient of the domain of discontinuity. We note here what we mean by the ideal bounary is just the quotient of the domain of discontinuity. The higher A^^<^>-genus carries the information of the fundamental group, which turns out to be isomorphic to Γ in our case, and that is all that the higher A^^<^>-genus knows. And it is determined by the cohomology of Γ.