This paper contains examples of closed aspherical manifolds obtained as a by-product of recent work by the author [Bel] on the relative strict hyperbolization of polyhedra. The following is proved. (I) Any closed aspherical triangulated n-manifold M with hyperbolic fundamental group is a retract of a closed aspherical triangulated (n+ 1)manifold N with hyperbolic fundamental group. (II) If B1, ...

This is a survey on known results and open problems about closed aspherical manifolds, i.e., connected closed manifolds whose universal coverings are contractible. Many examples come from certain kinds of non-positive curvature conditions. The property aspherical, which is a purely homotopy theoretical condition, implies many striking results about the geometry and analysis of the manifold or i...

Previous studies have explained the shapes of LBV nebu-lae, such as η Car, by invoking the interaction of an isotropic fast wind with a previously deposited, slow aspherical wind (a " slow torus "). In this work I focus on the opposite scenario where an aspherical fast wind expands into a previously deposited isotropic slow wind. Using high resolution hydrodynamic simulations which include the ...

We give two versions of relative hyperbolization. We use the first version to prove that if (each component of) a closed manifold M is aspherical and if M is a boundary, then it is the boundary of an aspherical manifold.

We show that the finitely presented groups with unsolvable word problem given by the Boone-Britton construction have cohomological dimension 2. More precisely we show these groups can be obtained from a free group by successively forming HNN-extensions where the associated subgroups are finitely generated free groups. Also the presentations obtained for these groups are aspherical. Using this w...

AIMS To compare the quality of vision in pseudophakic patients implanted with aspherical and spherical intraocular lenses (IOLs). MATERIALS AND METHODS Randomized prospective longitudinal intrapatient comparison between aspherical and spherical IOLs performed on 22 patients who underwent bilateral cataract surgery. Best corrected visual acuity, subjective contrast sensitivity, Strehl ratio an...

In this paper we address the issue of the origin of LBV bipolar bubbles. Previous studies have explained the shapes of LBV nebulae, such as η Car, by invoking the interaction of an isotropic fast wind with a previously deposited, slow aspherical wind (a “slow torus”). In this paper we focus on the opposite scenario where an aspherical fast wind expands into a previously deposited isotropic slow...

Aspherical explosion models for the hypernova (hyper-energetic supernova) SN 1998bw are presented. Nucleosynthesis in aspherical explosions is examined with a two-dimensional hydrodynamical code and a detailed nuclear reaction network. Aspherical explosions lead to a strong α-rich freezeout, thus enhancing the abundance ratios [Ca, Ti, and Zn / Fe] in the ejecta. The nebular line profiles of th...

The “polyhedral product functor” produces a space from a simplicial complex L and a collection of pairs of spaces, {(A(i), B(i))}, where i ranges over the vertex set of L. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the resulting space to be aspherical. There are two similar constructions, each of which starts with a space X and a collection of subspaces, {Xi}, where i ∈ {0, 1 . . . , n}, a...

We show that the aspherical manifolds produced via the relative strict hyperbolization of polyhedra enjoy many group-theoretic and topological properties of open finite volume negatively pinched manifolds, including relative hyperbolicity, nonvanishing of simplicial volume, co-Hopf property, finiteness of outer automorphism group, absence of splitting over elementary subgroups, acylindricity, a...