On the structure of Riemannian manifolds of almost nonnegative Ricci curvature

Abstract

We study the structure of manifolds with almost nonnegative Ricci curvature. We prove a compact Riemannian manifold with bounded curvature, diameter bounded from above, and Ricci curvature bounded from below by an almost nonnegative real number such that the first Betti number havingcodimension two is an infranilmanifold or a finite cover is a sphere bundle over a torus. Furthermore, if we assume the Ricci curvature is bounded and volume is bounded from below, then the manifold must be an infranilmanifold.