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# The Degree Theorem in higher rank

## 1 Introduction

The problem of relating volume to degree for maps between Riemannian manifolds is a fundamental one. Gromov’s Volume Comparison Theorem \[Gr\] gives such a relation for maps into negatively curved manifolds. In this paper we extend Gromov’s theorem to locally symmetric manifolds of nonpositive curvature.

The key fact we prove is: any continuous map $`f:NM`$ between closed manifolds, with $`M`$ nonpositively curved and locally symmetric (barring a few exceptions), is homotopic to a $`C^1`$ map with universally bounded Jacobian, depending only on smallest Ricci curvatures of $`M,N`$. We use this to prove the following.

###### Theorem 1.1 (The Degree Theorem).

Let $`M`$ be a closed, locally symmetric $`n`$-manifold with nonpositive sectional curvatures. Assume that $`M`$ has no local direct factors locally isometric to $`\text{R}^k,\text{H}^2`$, or $`\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$. Then for any closed Riemannian manifold $`N`$ and any continuous map $`f:NM`$,

$$\mathrm{deg}(f)C\frac{\mathrm{Vol}(N)}{\mathrm{Vol}(M)}$$

where $`C>0`$ depends only on $`n`$ and the smallest Ricci curvatures of $`N`$ and $`M`$.

Remarks.

1. As tori have self-maps of arbitrary degree, it is easy to see that the theorem would be false without the “no $`\text{R}^k`$ factors” hypothesis. We believe that the “no $`\text{H}^2`$ or $`\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$ local factors” hypothesis is unnecessary; we show in Example 4.6, however, that the issue is delicate, and depends on the chosen class of metrics on $`N`$.
2. By scaling the metrics it is easy to see that the dependence of the constant $`C`$ on the smallest curvatures cannot be improved. Actually, we determine the constant explicitly in terms of the symmetric space and the volume entropy of $`N`$ (see §2.1).
3. In §6.2 we extend Theorem 1.1 to the case where $`N`$ and $`M`$ have finite volume (with “bounded geometry”) but are not necessarily compact, and where $`f`$ is a coarse Lipshitz map.

When $`dim(M)=2`$ the conclusion of the theorem follows easily from the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem. When $`\mathrm{rank}(M)=1`$, Besson-Courtois-Gallot \[BCG1\] proved the stronger entropy rigidity theorem, giving the exact best constant $`C`$. Entropy rigidity is still open in higher rank 111Entropy rigidity has recently been proved \[BCG3, CF\] for manifolds locally modelled on products of rank one symmetric spaces with no $`\text{H}^2`$ factors.; this would correspond to the above theorem with the constant $`C`$ in the inequality being $`C=\left(\frac{h(g)}{h(g_0)}\right)^n`$, where $`h(g)`$ is the volume entropy of $`g`$ (see \[BCG1\]), with equality being obtained iff $`g=g_0`$ locally symmetric.

The Besson-Courtois-Gallot technique is a central ingredient here; indeed the main idea in our proof of Theorem 1.1 is to give a higher rank version of the “canonical map” of \[BCG1\], and to give an a priori bound on its Jacobian. This bound is of independent interest, and constitutes a first step towards proving higher rank entropy rigidity.

The Minvol invariant. One of the basic invariants associated to a smooth manifold $`M`$ is its minimal volume:

$$\mathrm{Minvol}(M):=\underset{g}{inf}\{\mathrm{Vol}(M,g):|K(g)|1\}$$

where $`g`$ ranges over all smooth metrics on $`M`$ and $`K(g)`$ denotes the sectional curvature of $`g`$. The basic questions about $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)`$ are: for which $`M`$ is $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)>0`$? when is $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)`$ realized by some metric $`g`$?

When a nonpositively curved manifold $`M`$ has a local direct factor locally isometric to $`\text{R}^k`$, it is easy to see that $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)=0`$. By taking $`f`$ to be the identity map (while varying the metric $`g`$ on $`M`$), Theorem 1.1 immediately gives:

###### Corollary 1.2 (Positivity of Minvol).

Let $`M`$ be any finite volume, locally symmetric $`n`$-manifold ($`n2`$) of nonpositive curvature. Assume that $`M`$ has no local direct factors locally isometric to $`\text{R}^k,\text{H}^2`$, or $`\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$. Then $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)>0.`$

For compact $`M`$, Corollary 1.2 was proved (without the $`\text{H}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{SL}(3,\text{R})`$ restriction) in \[Gr2\] (see also \[Sa\] for the case manifolds locally modelled on the symmetric space for $`\mathrm{SL}(n,\text{R})`$). When $`M`$ is real hyperbolic, Besson-Courtois-Gallot \[BCG1\] proved that $`\mathrm{Minvol}(M)`$ is uniquely realized by the locally symmetric metric. It seems possible that this might hold in general.

Self maps and the co-Hopf property.  As $`\mathrm{deg}(f^n)=\mathrm{deg}(f)^n`$, an immediate corollary of Theorem 1.1 is the following.

###### Corollary 1.3 (Self maps).

Let $`M`$ be a finite-volume locally symmetric manifold as in Theorem 1.1. Then $`M`$ admits no self-maps of degree $`>1`$. In particular, $`\pi _1(M)`$ is co-Hopfian: every injective endomorphism of $`\pi _1(M)`$ is surjective.

Note that Corollary 1.3 may also be deduced from Margulis’s Superrigidity theorem (for higher rank $`M`$). The co-Hopf property for lattices was first proved by Prasad \[Pr\].

More generally, if $`N`$ and $`M`$ are as in Theorem 1.1 and $`f:NM`$ and $`g:MN`$ are two maps of nonzero degree then they both must have degree one since $`fg`$ is a self map of $`M`$.

Outline of the proof of Theorem 1.1.  Given $`f:NM`$ as in the hypothesis of the theorem, we use the method of \[BCG1, BCG2\] to construct a “canonical” map $`F:NM`$ which is homotopic to $`f`$ (hence $`\mathrm{deg}F=\mathrm{deg}f`$). The main difficulty is to then give a universal bound on the Jacobian of $`F`$; once this is done a simple degree argument gives the theorem.

Step 1 (Constructing the map): First consider the case when the metric on $`N`$ is nonpositively curved. Denote by $`Y`$ (resp. $`X`$) the universal cover of $`N`$ (resp. $`M`$). Let $`(Y),(X)`$ denote the spaces of atomless probability measures on the visual boundaries of the universal covers $`Y,X`$.

Morally what we do is, following the method of \[BCG2\], to define a map

$$\stackrel{~}{F}:Y(Y)\stackrel{\varphi _{}}{}(X)\stackrel{\mathrm{bar}}{}X$$

where $`\varphi _{}=\stackrel{~}{f}_{}`$ is the pushforward of measures and $`\mathrm{bar}`$ is the “barycenter of a measure” (see §3). The inclusion $`Y(Y)`$, denoted $`x\mu _x`$, is given by the construction of the Patterson-Sullivan measures $`\{\mu _x\}_{xX}`$ corresponding to $`\pi _1(N)<\mathrm{Isom}(Y)`$ (see §2). An essential feature of these constructions is that they are all canonical, so that all of the maps are equivariant. Hence $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$ descends to a map $`F:NM`$.

One problem with this construction outline is that the metric on $`Y`$ may not be nonpositively curved. So we must find an alternative to using the “visual boundary” of $`Y`$. This is done by constructing a certain family of smooth measures $`\mu _s`$ on $`Y`$ itself, pushing them forward via $`\stackrel{~}{f}`$, and convolving with Patterson-Sullivan measure on $`X`$. Maps $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s`$ are then defined by taking the barycenters of these measures; it is actually these maps which are considered instead of $`F`$. This idea was first introduced in \[BCG1\].

Two new features of $`F`$ appear in higher rank. First, the non-strictness of convexity of the Busemann function (see §3) must be overcome to define $`F`$. Second, and more importantly, a theorem of Albuquerque shows that the support of each of the measures $`\mu _x`$ is codimension $`\mathrm{rank}(X)1`$ subset of $`X`$ called the Furstenburg boundary of $`X`$ (see §2). This fact and its implications are crucial for later steps.

Step 2 (The Jacobian estimate):  The heart of the paper ( §4 and §5) is obtaining a universal bound on $`F`$, independent of $`f`$. For this we first realize the Jacobian of $`F`$ as the ratio of determinants of two matrix integrals. We then show that whenever there are small eigenvalues in the denominator there are a sufficient number of small eigenvalues in the numerator with which to cancel them. The key is to find these eigenvalues independently of the integrating measure (which depends on $`\mu _s`$), therefore reducing it to a problem about semisimple Lie groups.

Step 3 (Finishing the proof): Once a universal bound on $`|\mathrm{Jac}(F)|`$ is found, a simple degree argument finishes the proof. In the case when $`M`$ and $`N`$ are not compact, the main difficulty is proving that $`F_s`$ is proper. This is quite technical, and requires extending some of the ideas of \[BCS\] to the higher rank setting.

## 2 Patterson-Sullivan measures on symmetric spaces

In this section we briefly recall Albuquerque’s theory \[Al\] of Patterson-Sullivan measures in higher rank symmetric spaces. For background on nonpositively curved manifolds, symmetric spaces, visual boundaries, Busemann functions, etc., we refer the reader to \[BGS\] and \[Eb\].

### 2.1 Basic properties

Let $`X`$ be a Riemannian symmetric space of noncompact type. Denote by $`X`$ the visual boundary of $`X`$; that is, the set of equivalence classes of geodesic rays in $`X`$, endowed with the cone topology. Hence $`XX`$ is a compactification of $`X`$ which is homeomorphic to a closed ball.

The volume entropy $`h(g)`$ of a closed Riemannian $`n`$-manifold $`(M,g)`$ is defined as

$$h(g)=\underset{R\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{R}\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{Vol}(B(x,R)))$$

where $`B(x,R)`$ is the ball of radius $`R`$ around a fixed point $`x`$ in the universal cover $`X`$. The number $`h(g)`$ is independent of the choice of $`x`$, and equals the topological entropy of the geodesic flow on $`(M,g)`$ when the curvature $`K(g)`$ satisfies $`K(g)0`$. Note that while the volume $`\mathrm{Vol}(M,g)`$ is not invariant under scaling the metric $`g`$, the normalized entropy

$$\mathrm{ent}(g)=h(g)^n\mathrm{Vol}(M,g)$$

is scale invariant.

Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a lattice in $`\mathrm{Isom}(X)`$, so that $`h(g_0)<\mathrm{}`$ where $`(M,g_0)`$ is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\backslash X`$ with the locally symmetric metric.

Generalizing the construction of Patterson-Sullivan, Albuquerque constructs in \[Al\] a family of Patterson-Sullivan measures on $`X`$. This is a family of probability measures $`\{\nu _x\}_{xX}`$ on $`X`$ which provide a particularly natural embedding of $`X`$ into the space of probability measures on $`X`$.

###### Theorem 2.1 (Existence Theorem, \[Al\]).

There exists a family $`\{\nu _x\}`$ of probability measures on $`X`$ satisfying the following properties:

1. Each $`\nu _x`$ has no atoms.
2. The family of measures $`\{\nu _x\}`$ is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-equivariant:

$$\gamma _{}\nu _x=\nu _{\gamma x}\text{ for all }\gamma \mathrm{\Gamma }$$
3. For all $`x,yX`$, the measure $`\nu _y`$ is absolutely continuous with respect to $`\nu _x`$. In fact the Radon-Nikodym derivative is given explicitly by:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\nu _x}{d\nu _y}}(\xi )=e^{h(g)B(x,y,\xi )}`$ (1)
where $`B(x,y,\xi )`$ is the Busemann function on $`X`$. For points $`x,yX`$ and $`\xi X`$, the function $`B:X\times X\times X\text{R}`$ is defined by

$$B(x,y,\xi )=\underset{t\mathrm{}}{lim}d_X(y,\gamma _\xi (t))t$$

where $`\gamma _\xi `$ is the unique geodesic ray with $`\gamma (0)=x`$ and $`\gamma (\mathrm{})=\xi `$.

The second property implies no two measures are the same as measures. Thus the assignment $`x\nu _x`$ defines an injective map

$$\nu :X(X)$$

where $`(X)`$ is the space of probability measures on $`X`$. Such a mapping satisfying the above properties is called an $`h(g_0)`$-conformal density.

### 2.2 Symmetric spaces of noncompact type

Before we present Albuquerque’s theorem we will need some necessary background about higher rank symmetric spaces.

By definition, the symmetric space $`X`$ is $`G/K`$ where $`G`$ is a semisimple Lie group and $`K`$ a maximal compact subgroup. Fix once and for all a basepoint $`pX`$. This choice uniquely determines a Cartan decomposition $`𝔤=𝔨𝔭`$ of the Lie algebra of $`G`$ where $`𝔨`$ is the Lie algebra of the isotropy subgroup $`K=\mathrm{Stab}_G(p)`$ of $`p`$ in $`G`$ and $`𝔭`$ is orthogonal to $`𝔨`$ with respect to the killing form $`B(,)`$ on $`𝔤`$. Therefore, $`𝔭`$ is also identified with the tangent space $`T_pX`$.

Let $`𝔞`$ be, once and for all, a fixed maximal abelian subalgebra of $`𝔤`$. It follows from the Cartan decomposition that $`𝔞𝔭`$. The set $`\mathrm{exp}(𝔞)p`$ will be a maximal flat (totally geodesically embedded Euclidean space of maximal dimension) in $`X`$. Recall, a vector $`vTX`$ is called a regular vector if it is tangent to a unique maximal flat. Otherwise it is a singular vector. A geodesic is called regular (resp. singular) if one (and hence all) of its tangent vectors are regular (singular). A point $`\xi X`$ is regular (singular) if any (and hence all) of the geodesics in the corresponding equivalence class are regular (singular).

Let $`𝔞^{}`$ be the dual to $`𝔞`$, then for each $`\alpha 𝔞^{}`$ define

$$𝔤_\alpha =\{Y𝔤|\mathrm{ad}_AY=\alpha (A)Y\text{for all }A𝔞\}.$$

We call $`\alpha `$ a root if $`𝔤_\alpha 0`$. Therefore the roots form a finite set $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

If $`\theta _p`$ is the Cartan involution associated to the point $`p`$, which is $`\mathrm{Id}`$ on $`𝔨`$ and $`\mathrm{Id}`$ on $`𝔭`$, then we may define a positive definite inner product $`\varphi _p`$ on $`𝔤`$ by $`\varphi _p(Y,Z)=B(\theta _pY,Z)`$. With respect to $`\varphi _p`$, the folowing root space decomposition

$$𝔤=𝔤_0+\underset{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }}{}𝔤_\alpha $$

is orthogonal.

The following is proposition can be found in 2.7.3 of \[Eb\].

###### Proposition 2.2.

Some properties of the roots and root space decomposition are:

1. $`[𝔤_\alpha ,𝔤_\beta ]𝔤_{\alpha +\beta }`$ if $`\alpha +\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ or is $`0`$ otherwise.
2. If $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ then $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\theta _p:𝔤_\alpha 𝔤_\alpha `$ is an isomorphism.
3. If $`\alpha `$ is not an integer multiple of some other $`\lambda \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ then the only possible multiples of $`\alpha `$ in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are $`\pm \alpha `$ and $`\pm 2\alpha `$.
4. We have $`𝔤_0=(𝔤_0𝔨)+𝔞`$.
5. If $`\alpha ,\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ then $`\beta 2\frac{\alpha ,\beta }{\alpha ,\alpha }\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ where $`,`$ is the dual inner product to $`\varphi _p`$ on $`𝔞^{}`$. Furthermore, $`2\frac{\alpha ,\beta }{\alpha ,\alpha }`$ is always an integer and if $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are not collinear then it is $`\pm 1`$.

We call a subset $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ a base for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ if

1. the elements of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ form a basis (over R) for $`𝔞^{}`$,
2. and every root in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ can be written as a linear combination of of elements in $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with coefficients being either all nonnegative integers or all nonpositive integers.

If we choose an regular element $`A𝔞`$ then define the set of positive roots corresponding to $`A`$,

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+=\{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }|\alpha (A)0\}$$

The subset $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A^+\mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+`$ consisting of elements which cannot be written as a sum of two elements in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+`$ is a base for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Sometimes $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A^+`$ is called a fundamental system of positive roots.

For $`A𝔞`$ the associated (open) Weyl chamber $`W(A)`$ is the connected component of the set of regular vectors in $`𝔞`$ which contains $`A`$. We also call the set $`\mathrm{exp}W(A)\mathrm{exp}(𝔞)`$, as well as $`\mathrm{exp}(W(A))pX`$, a Weyl chamber which we again denote by $`W(A)`$ using the context to determine where exactly it lies.

The union of all the singular geodesics in the flat $`\mathrm{exp}(𝔞)p`$ passing through $`p`$ is a finite set of hyperplanes forming the boundaries of the Weyl chambers. This provides another description of the Weyl chamber $`W(A)`$ as

$$W(A)=\{Y𝔞|\alpha (Y)>0\text{ for all }\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }_A^+\}.$$

For each subset $`I\mathrm{\Delta }_A^+`$ the set $`W_I(A)=_{\alpha I}(\mathrm{ker}\alpha \overline{W(A)}`$ is called the Weyl chamber face corresponding to the set $`I`$, and we designate $`W_{\mathrm{}}(A)=W(A)`$. The subgroup of $`K`$ which stabilizes the face $`W_I(A)`$ we denote by $`K_I`$.

### 2.3 The Furstenberg Boundary

The Furstenberg boundary of a symmetric space $`X`$ of noncompact type is abstractly defined to be $`G/P`$ where $`P`$ is a minimal parabolic subgroup of the connected component $`G`$ of the identity in $`\mathrm{Isom}(X)`$.

The Furstenberg boundary can be identified with the orbit of $`G`$ acting on any regular point $`v(\mathrm{})X`$, the endpoint of a geodesic tangent to a regular vector $`v`$. of a Weyl chamber in a fixed flat $`𝔞`$. This follows from the fact that the action of any such $`P`$ on $`X`$ fixes some regular point.

Because of this, for symmetric spaces of higher rank, behaviour on the visual boundary can often be aptly described by its restriction to the Furstenberg boundary. Here we will use only some very basic properties of this boundary. For more details on semisimple Lie groups and the Furstenberg boundary, see \[Zi\].

For a fixed regular vector $`A𝔞`$ and associated set of positive roots $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+`$ the barycenter $`b`$ of the Weyl chamber $`W(A)`$ is defined to be

$$b=\underset{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}m_\alpha H_\alpha $$

where $`m_\alpha =dim𝔤_\alpha `$ is the multiplicty of $`\alpha `$ and $`H_\alpha `$ is the dual vector (with respect to $`\varphi _p`$) of $`\alpha `$. Set $`b^+=b/b`$.

Define the set $`_FXX`$ to be $`_FX=Gb^+(\mathrm{})`$. Henceforth we will refer to the Furstenberg boundary as this specific realization. We point out that for any lattice $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in $`\mathrm{Isom}(X)`$, the induced action on the boundary is transitive only on $`_FX`$. That is, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }b^+(\mathrm{})}=Gb^+(\mathrm{})`$ even though for any interior point $`xX`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }x}=X`$.

### 2.4 Albuquerque’s Theorem

Theorem 7.4 and Proposition 7.5 of \[Al\] combine to give the following theorem, which will play a crucial role in our proof of Theorem 1.1.

###### Theorem 2.3 (Description of $`\nu _x`$).

Let $`(X,g_0)`$ be a symmetric space of noncompact type, and let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a lattice in $`\mathrm{Isom}(X)`$. Then

1. $`h(g_0)=b`$,
2. $`b^+(\mathrm{})`$ is a regular point, and hence $`_FX`$ is a regular set,
3. For any $`xX`$, the support $`\mathrm{supp}(\nu _x)`$ of $`\nu _x`$ is equal to $`_FX`$, and
4. $`\nu _x`$ is the unique probability measure invariant under the action on $`_FX`$ of the compact isotropy group $`\mathrm{Stab}_G(x)`$ at $`x`$. In particular, $`\nu _p`$ is the unique $`K`$-invariant probability measure on $`_FX`$.

Note that when $`X`$ is has rank one, $`_FX=X`$. In general $`_FX`$ has codimension $`\mathrm{rank}(X)1`$ in $`X`$.

### 2.5 Limits of Patterson-Sullivan measures

We now describe the asymptotic behaviour of the $`\nu _x`$ as $`x`$ tends to a point in $`X`$.

For any point $`\xi `$ of the visual boundary, let $`S_\theta `$ be the set of points $`\xi _FX`$ such that there is a Weyl chamber $`W`$ whose closure $`\overline{W}`$ in $`X`$ contains both $`\theta `$ and $`\xi `$. Let $`K_\theta `$ be the subgroup of $`K`$ which stabilizes $`S_\theta `$. $`K_\theta `$ acts transitively on $`S_\theta `$ (see the proof below).

###### Theorem 2.4 (Support of $`\nu _x`$).

Given any sequence $`\{x_i\}`$ tending to $`\theta X`$ in the cone topology, the measures $`\nu _{x_i}`$ converge in $`(_FX)`$ to the unique $`K_\theta `$-invariant probability measure $`\nu _\theta `$ supported on $`S_\theta `$.

Proof.  Let $`x_i=g_ip`$, for an appropriate sequence $`g_iG`$. Recall that $`\nu _{x_i}=(g_i)_{}\nu _p`$. Then combining part (4) of Theorem 2.3 with Proposition 9.43 of \[GJT\] have that some subsequence of the $`\nu _{x_i}`$ converges to a $`K_\theta `$-invariant measure $`\nu _\theta `$ supported on $`S_\theta `$.

Note that in \[GJT\], the notation $`I`$ refers to a subset of a fundamental set of roots corresponding to the face of a Weyl chamber containing $`\theta `$ in its boundary. If $`g_ip=k_ia_ip`$ converges then both $`k=limk_i`$ and $`a^I=lim_ia_i^I`$ exist (note the definition of $`a^I`$ in \[GJT\]). Again in the notation of \[GJT\], $`K_\theta `$ is the conjugate subgroup $`(ka^I)K^I(ka^I)^1`$ in $`K`$. Moreover, $`S_\theta `$ is the orbit $`ka^IK^Ib^+(\mathrm{})`$.

By Corollary 9.46 and Proposition 9.45 of \[GJT\] any other convergent subsequence of the $`\nu _{x_i}`$ produces the same measure in the limit, and therefore the sequence $`\nu _{x_i}`$ itself converges to $`\nu _\theta `$ uniquely. $``$

In the case when $`\theta `$ is a regular point, the above theorem implies that $`S_\theta `$ is a single point and the limit measure $`\nu _\theta `$ is simply the Dirac probability measure at that point point in $`_FX`$.

## 3 The barycenter of a measure

In this section we describe the natural map which is an essential ingredient in the method of Besson-Courtois-Gallot.

Let $`\varphi `$ denote the lift to universal covers of $`f`$ with basepoint $`pY`$ (resp. $`f(p)X`$), i.e. $`\varphi =\stackrel{~}{f}:YX`$. We will also denote the metric and Riemannian volume form on universal cover $`Y`$ by $`g`$ and $`dg`$ respectively. Then for each $`s>h(g)`$ and $`yY`$ consider the probability measure $`\mu _y^s`$ on $`Y`$ in the Lebesgue class with density given by

$$\frac{d\mu _y^s}{dg}(z)=\frac{e^{sd(y,z)}}{_Ye^{sd(y,z)}𝑑g}.$$

The $`\mu _y^s`$ are well defined by the choice of $`s`$.

Consider the push-forward $`\varphi _{}\mu _y^s`$, which is a measure on $`X`$. Define $`\sigma _y^s`$ to be the convolution of $`\varphi _{}\mu _y^s`$ with the Patterson-Sullivan measure $`\nu _z`$ for the symmetric metric.

In other words, for $`UX`$ a Borel set, define

$$\sigma _y^s(U)=_X\nu _z(U)d(\varphi _{}\mu _y^s)(z)$$

Since $`\nu _z=1`$, we have

$$\sigma _y^s=\mu _y^s=1.$$

Let $`B(x,\theta )=B(\stackrel{~}{f}(p),x,\theta )`$ be the Busemann function on $`X`$ with respect to the basepoint $`\stackrel{~}{f}(p)`$ (which we will also denote by $`p`$). For $`s>h(g)`$ and $`xX,yY`$ define a function

$$_{s,y}(x)=_XB(x,\theta )𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

By Theorem 2.4, the support of $`\nu _z`$, hence of $`\sigma _y^s`$, is all of $`_FX`$, which in turn equals the $`G`$-orbit $`Gb^+(\mathrm{})`$. Hence

$$_{s,y}(x)=_{_FX}B(x,\theta )𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )=_{Gb^+(\mathrm{})}B(x,\theta )𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta ).$$

Since $`X`$ is nonpositively curved, the Busemann function $`B`$ is (non-strictly) convex on $`X`$. Hence $`_{s,y}`$ is convex on $`X`$, being a convex integral of convex functions. While $`B`$ is strictly convex only when $`X`$ is negatively curved, we have the following.

###### Proposition 3.1 (Strict convexity of $``$).

For each fixed $`y`$ and $`s`$, the function $`x_{y,s}(x)`$ is strictly convex, and has a unique critical point in $`X`$ which is its minimum.

Proof.  It suffices to show that given a geodesic segment $`\gamma (t)`$ between two points $`\gamma (0),\gamma (1)X`$, there exists some $`\xi _FX`$ such that function $`B(\gamma (t),\xi )`$ is strictly convex in $`t`$, and hence on an open positive $`\mu _y`$-measure set around $`\xi `$. We know it is convex by the comment preceding the statement of the proposition.

If $`B(\gamma (t),\xi )`$ is constant on some geodesic subsegment of $`\gamma `$ for some $`\xi `$, then $`\gamma `$ must lie in some flat $``$ such that the geodesic between $`\xi `$ and $`\gamma `$ (which meets $`\gamma `$ at a right angle) also lies in $``$. On the other hand, $`\xi _FX`$ is in the direction of the algebraic centroid in a Weyl chamber, and $`\gamma `$ is perpendicular to this direction. By the properties of the roots, $`\gamma `$ is a regular geodesic (i.e. $`\gamma `$ is not contained in the boundary of a Weyl chamber). In particular, $`\gamma `$ is contained in a unique flat $``$. Furthermore, $`_FX`$ is a finite set (an orbit of the Weyl group). As a result, for almost every $`\xi _FX`$ $`B(\gamma (t),\xi )`$ is strictly convex in $`t`$.

For fixed $`zX`$, by the last property listed in Theorem 2.1, we see that

$$_{_FX}B(x,\theta )𝑑\nu _z(\theta )$$

tends to $`\mathrm{}`$ as $`x`$ tends to any boundary point $`\xi X`$. Then for fixed $`y`$ and $`s>h(g)`$, $`_{y,s}(x)`$ increases to $`\mathrm{}`$ as $`x`$ tends to any boundary point $`\xi X`$. Hence it has a local minimum in $`X`$, which by strict convexity must be unique. $``$

We call the unique critical point of $`_{s,y}`$ the barycenter of the measure $`\sigma _y^s`$, and define a map $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s:YX`$ by

$$\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y)=\text{the unique critical point of }_{s,y}$$

Since for any two points $`p_1,p_2X`$

$$B(p_1,x,\theta )=B(p_2,x,\theta )+B(p_1,p_2,\theta )$$

we see that $`_{s,y}`$ only changes by an additive constant when we change the basepoint of $`B`$. Also, $`_{s,y}`$ only changes by a multiplicative constant when we change the basepoint in the definition of $`\mu _y`$. Since neither change affects the critical point of $`_{y,s}`$, we see that $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s`$ is independent of choice of basepoints.

The equivariance of $`\stackrel{~}{f}`$ and of $`\{\mu _y\}`$ implies that $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s`$ is also equivariant. Hence $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s`$ descends to a map $`F_s:NM`$. It is easy to see that $`F_s`$ is homotopic to $`f`$.

###### Proposition 3.2.

The map $`\mathrm{\Psi }_s:[0,1]\times NM`$ defined by

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_s(t,y)=F_{s+\frac{t}{1t}}(y)$$

is a homotopy between $`\mathrm{\Psi }_s(0,)=F_s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_s(1,)=f`$.

Proof.  From its definitions, $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y)`$ is continuous in $`s`$ and $`y`$. Observe that for fixed $`y`$, $`lim_s\mathrm{}\sigma _y^s=\nu _{\varphi (y)}`$. If follows that $`lim_s\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y)=\varphi (y)`$. This implies the proposition. $``$

As in \[BCG1\], we will see that $`F_s`$ is $`C^1`$, and will estimate its Jacobian.

## 4 The Jacobian estimate

Let $`X`$ be expressed as a product of its irreducible factors $`X=X_1\times \mathrm{}\times X_k`$, and let $`g_i`$ denote the restricted symmetric metric on each factor $`X_i`$. As above, $`h(g_i)`$ denotes the volume entropy of $`(X_i,g_i)`$. The main estimate of this paper is the following.

###### Theorem 4.1 (The Jacobian Estimate).

For all $`s>h(g)`$ and all $`yN`$ we have

$$|\mathrm{Jac}F_s(y)|C\left(\frac{s}{h(g_1)h(g_2)\mathrm{}h(g_k)}\right)^n$$

for some constant $`C`$, depending only on $`dimM`$.

Dependence of constants.  Up to scaling of the metric, there are only a finite number of irreducible symmetric spaces of noncompact type in a given dimension. Therefore it is sufficient to show that $`C`$ depends only on the individual symmetric spaces $`(X_i,g_i)`$. Furthermore, when we apply Theorem 4.1, we will take the limit as $`sh(g)`$ so that the quantity $`C\left(\frac{h(g)}{h(g_1)h(g_2)\mathrm{}h(g_k)}\right)^n`$ is the constant appearing in Theorem 1.1. It is evident then that the right hand side of inequality of Theorem 1.1 is scale invariant with respect to the metrics $`g`$ and $`g_i`$.

We claim that the quantities $`h(g)`$ and $`h(g_i)`$ can be bounded by Ricci curvatures. The Bishop volume comparison Theorem (\[BC\]) states that if the Ricci curvatures of $`(Y,g)`$ are all greater than $`(n1)\kappa `$ for some $`\kappa 0`$ then for any $`yY`$ and $`r>0`$,

$$\mathrm{Vol}B(y,r)V_\kappa (r)$$

where $`V_\kappa (r)`$ is the volume of the ball of radius $`r`$ in the space form of constant curvature $`\kappa `$. In particular this implies that

$$h(g)\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}V_\kappa (r)}{r}=(n1)\sqrt{\kappa }.$$

Similarly, in the course of the proof of Theorem 4.1 we will see explicitly that

$$h(g_i)=\mathrm{Tr}\sqrt{R_i(b^+,,b^+,)}$$

where $`R_i`$ is the curvature tensor on $`(X_i,g_i)`$. In particular

$$h(g_i)\mathrm{min}\{1,\mathrm{Ricci}(b^+,b^+)\}.$$

Therefore the constant $`C`$ in Theorem 1.1 depends only on the Ricci curvatures of $`N`$ and $`M`$.

We will prove Theorem 4.1 in several steps.

### 4.1 Finding the Jacobian

We obtain the differential of $`F_s`$ by implicit differentiation:

$$0=D_{x=F_s(y)}_{s,y}(x)=_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}()𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

Hence as $`2`$-forms

$$0=D_yD_{x=F_s(y)}_{s,y}(x)=_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(D_yF_s(),)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

$$s_Y_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}()_yd(y,z),𝑑\nu _{\varphi (z)}(\theta )𝑑\mu _y^s(z)$$

The distance function $`d(y,z)`$ is Lipschitz and $`C^1`$ off of the cut locus which has Lebesgue measure 0. It follows from the Implicit Function Theorem (see \[BCG2\]) that $`F_s`$ is $`C^1`$ for $`s>h(g)`$. By the chain rule,

$$\mathrm{Jac}F_s=s^n\frac{det\left(_Y_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}()_yd(y,z),𝑑\nu _{\varphi (z)}(\theta )𝑑\mu _y^s(z)\right)}{det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)}$$

Applying Hölder’s inequality to the numerator gives:

$$|\mathrm{Jac}F_s|s^n\frac{det\left(_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}^2𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)^{1/2}det\left(_Y_yd(y,z),^2𝑑\mu _y^s(z)\right)^{1/2}}{det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)}$$

Using that $`\mathrm{Tr}_yd(y,z),^2=|_yd(y,z)|^2=1`$, except possibly on a measure $`0`$ set, we may estimate

$$det\left(_Y_yd(y,z),^2𝑑\mu _y^s(z)\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}\right)^n$$

Therefore

$`|\mathrm{Jac}F_s|\left({\displaystyle \frac{s}{\sqrt{n}}}\right)^n{\displaystyle \frac{det\left(_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}^2𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)^{1/2}}{det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)}}`$ (2)
### 4.2 Reduction to Irreducible Case

In this subsection we make, following \[CF\], a reduction to the case when $`X=\stackrel{~}{M}`$ is irreducible.

If $`X=X_1\times \mathrm{}\times X_k`$ is the irreducible expression for $`X`$ as a product, the group $`G=\mathrm{Isom}(X)`$ can also be written as a product $`G=G_1\times G_2\mathrm{}\times G_k`$, where each $`G_i\mathrm{SL}(2,\text{R}),\mathrm{SL}(3,\text{R})`$ is a simple Lie group. Theorem 2.3 implies that for all $`yY`$, the measure $`\sigma _y^s`$ is supported on the $`G`$-orbit

$$Gb^+(\mathrm{})=\{(G_1\times G_2\mathrm{}\times G_k)b^+(\mathrm{})\}$$

Hence

$$_FX=Gb^+(\mathrm{})=_FX_1\times \times _FX_k$$

Since each $`X_i`$ has rank one, $`_FX_i=X_i`$ so that

$$_FX=X_1\times \mathrm{}\times X_k$$

Let $`B_i`$ denote the Busemann function for the rank one symmetric space $`X_i`$ with metric $`g_i`$. Then for $`\theta _iX_iX`$ and $`x,yX_i`$ we have $`B(x,y,\theta _i)=B_i(x,y,\theta _i)`$. Since the factors $`X_i`$ are orthogonal in $`X`$ with respect to the metric $`g_0`$, the Busemann function of $`(X,g_0)`$ with basepoint $`pX`$ at a point $`\theta =(\theta _1,\mathrm{},\theta _k)_FX`$ is given by

$$B(x,\theta )=\frac{1}{\sqrt{k}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}B_i(x_i,\theta _i).$$

The Schur estimate for the determinant of symmetric semidefinite block matrices states,

$$det\left(\begin{array}{cc}A& B\\ B^{}& C\end{array}\right)det(A)det(C).$$

Applying the dual form of this estimate to our symmetric tensors we have

$$det\left(_{_FX}\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}d(B_i)_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\pi _i\theta )}\right)^2𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)$$

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}det\left(_{_FX_i}\left(d(B_i)_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\theta _i)}\right)^2d(\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s(\theta _i)\right),$$

where $`\pi _i:XX_i`$ and $`\pi _i:_FX_FX_i`$ are the canonical projections.

Since $`DdB_{(F_s(y),\theta )}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{k}}_{i=1}^kDdB_{i}^{}{}_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\pi _i\theta )}{}^{},`$ the denominator already splits as,

$$det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}det\left(_{_FX_i}\left(Dd(B_i)_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\theta _i)}\right)d(\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s(\theta _i)\right).$$

Putting these together we obtain,

$$|\mathrm{Jac}F_s(y)|\left(\frac{s}{\sqrt{n}}\right)^n\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}\frac{det\left(_{_FX_i}\left(d(B_i)_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\theta _i)}\right)^2d(\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s(\theta _i)\right)^{1/2}}{det\left(_{_FX_i}\left(Dd(B_i)_{(\pi _iF_s(y),\theta _i)}\right)d(\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s(\theta _i)\right)}.$$

Therefore we only need to bound each term in the product seperately. It suffices then to prove that for an irreducible symmetric space $`(X,g_0)\text{H}^2,\mathrm{SL}(3,\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}(3,\text{R})`$, and for any measure $`\mu `$ on $`_FX`$, that

$$\frac{det\left(_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}^2𝑑\mu (\theta )\right)^{1/2}}{det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\mu (\theta )\right)}\frac{C}{h(g_0)}.$$

We will continue to write $`\sigma _y^s`$ instead of $`\mu `$ or $`(\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s`$. The only property we use of $`\sigma _y^s`$ from this point on is that it is fully supported on $`_FX`$. Since $`\mathrm{supp}((\pi _i)_{}\sigma _y^s)=\pi _i(\mathrm{supp}(\sigma _y^s))=_FX_i`$ there is no harm by this imprecision.

### 4.3 Simplifying the Jacobian

As stated above we need only now consider irreducible $`(X,g_0)`$. For each point $`xX`$, we let $`_x`$ denote the canonical flat passing through $`x`$, i.e. $`_x=\mathrm{exp}(𝔞)x`$. We denote the tangent space to $`_x`$ simply as $``$ with the base point suppressed since it is naturally isomorphic to the Lie algebra $`\mathrm{exp}(𝔞)`$.

We wish to bound the quantity

$$\frac{det\left(_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}^2𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)^{1/2}}{det\left(_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)}$$

Let $``$ denote the tangent space to the flat $`_{F_s(y)}`$. Choose an orthonormal basis $`\{e_i\}`$ for the tangent space $`T_{F_s(y)}X`$ such that $`e_1,\mathrm{},e_{\mathrm{rank}(X)}`$ is a basis for $``$ with $`e_1(\mathrm{})=b^+(\mathrm{})`$. We may write the term

$$_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$
(3)
in matrix form as

$$_{_FX}O_\theta \left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 0\\ 0& D_\lambda \end{array}\right)O_\theta ^{}𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

where $`O_\theta `$ is the orthogonal matrix in the $`e_i`$ basis corresponding to the derivative of the unique isometry in $`K=\mathrm{Stab}_G(F_s(y))`$ which sends $`e_1`$ to $`v_{(F_s(y),\theta )}`$ (the vector in the tangent space of the point $`F_s(y)`$ in the direction $`\theta _FX`$). In the above expression, the upper left zero matrix sub-block has dimensions $`\mathrm{rank}(X)\times \mathrm{rank}(X)`$, and $`D_\lambda `$ has the form

$$D_\lambda =\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\lambda _1& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& \lambda _2& 0& \mathrm{}\\ \mathrm{}& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{}& 0& \lambda _{n\mathrm{rank}(X)}\end{array}\right)$$

where $`\{\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _{n\mathrm{rank}(X)}\}`$ is the set of nonzero eigenvalues of $`DdB_{(F_s(y),\theta )}`$. Since $`DdB_{(x,\theta )}`$ is $`G`$ equivariant, its eigenvalues do not depend on $`x`$ but only on which $`K`$-orbit in $`X`$ the point $`\theta `$ lies in. In particular, $`DdB_{(x,\theta )}`$ is flow invariant and hence the Ricatti equation shows that it is simply related to the curvature tensor by

$$DdB_{(x,\theta )}=\sqrt{R(v_{(x,\theta )},,v_{(x,\theta )},)}$$

On the other hand in a symmetric space $`R(v,,v,)=(\mathrm{ad}_v)^2|_𝔭`$. Therefore the eigenvalues of $`DdB_{(F_s(y),\theta )}`$ are those of $`DdB_{(p,b^+(\mathrm{}))}`$ which in turn are those of $`\sqrt{\mathrm{ad}_{b^+}^2}|_𝔭`$. (Note that while $`\mathrm{ad}_{b^+}`$ does not preserve $`𝔭`$, $`(\mathrm{ad}_{b^+})^2|_𝔭`$ is a symmetric endomorphism of $`𝔭`$.) Recall, $`b^+=b/b`$ where $`b=_{\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}m_\beta H_\beta `$ for any choice of $`A𝔞`$ (the choice of $`A`$ only determines the Weyl chamber containing $`b`$). Setting

$$𝔭_\alpha =𝔭(𝔤_\alpha 𝔤_\alpha ),$$

we have $`𝔭_\alpha =\{X\theta _pX:X𝔤_\alpha \}`$.

By definition of $`𝔤_\alpha `$, for each $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+`$ we may write

$$(\mathrm{ad}_{b^+})^2|_{𝔤_\alpha }=\alpha (b^+)^2\mathrm{Id}=\left(\frac{1}{b}\underset{\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}\alpha (m_\beta H_\beta )\right)^2\mathrm{Id}.$$

The same expression clearly holds for $`(\mathrm{ad}_{b^+})^2|_{𝔤_\alpha }`$. Therefore, for any $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\sqrt{(\mathrm{ad}_{b^+})^2|_{𝔭_\alpha }}=|\alpha (b^+)|`$. For $`𝔭_0=𝔞`$ the same formula holds with $`\alpha =0`$. In particular, the ratio of the largest eigenvalue (denoted by $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$) among the $`\lambda _i`$’s in $`D_\lambda `$ to the smallest nonzero eigenvalue (denoted by $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$) only depends on $`X`$.

Furthermore, since $`\alpha (b^+)>0`$ for all $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+`$ and $`dim𝔭_\alpha =m_\alpha `$, we have

$$\mathrm{Tr}\sqrt{\mathrm{ad}_{b^+}^2|_𝔭}=\underset{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}m_\alpha \alpha (b^+)=\frac{1}{b}\underset{\alpha ,\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}m_\alpha m_\beta \alpha (H_\beta )=$$

$$\frac{1}{b}\underset{\beta \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}m_\beta H_\beta ,\underset{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_A^+}{}m_\alpha H_\alpha =\frac{b^2}{b}=h(g_0)$$

where the last equality follows from Theorem 2.3. As a result, there is a constant $`c`$ only depending on $`X`$ such that

$$\frac{h(g_0)}{c}\lambda _ich(g_0)$$
(4)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},(n\mathrm{rank}(X))`$. We now use the following.

###### Lemma 4.2.

The determinant of a sum of $`n\times n`$ positive semidefinite matrices is a nondecreasing homogeneous polynomial of degree $`n`$ in the eigenvalues of each summand. Furthermore, if the sum is positive definite, then the determinant is strictly increasing in the eigenvalues of the summands.

Proof.  Let $`M`$ be the sum of positive semidefinite matrices. Then there exist fixed orthogonal matrices $`O_l`$ and real numbers $`\lambda _{l,j}`$ such that $`M`$ may be written as

$$M=\underset{l}{}O_l\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\lambda _{l,1}& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& \lambda _{l,2}& 0& \mathrm{}\\ \mathrm{}& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{}& 0& \lambda _{l,n}\end{array}\right)O_l^{}$$

Then we have the differentiation formula (see, e.g. Prop. 2.8 of \[Ch\]):

$$\frac{d}{d\lambda _{l,j}}detM=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{d}{d\lambda _{l,j}}M\right)M^{\mathrm{adj}}$$

where $`M^{\mathrm{adj}}`$ is the adjunct matrix of $`M`$. Now,

$$\frac{d}{d\lambda _{l,j}}M=O_lE_{(j,j)}O_l^{}$$

where $`E_{(j,j)}`$ is the elementary matrix with $`1`$ in the $`(j,j)`$ position and zeros elsewhere. Therefore, by cyclically permuting $`O_l`$ in the trace above we find that $`\frac{d}{d\lambda _{l,j}}detM`$ is the $`(j,j)`$ the entry of $`O_l^{}M^{\mathrm{adj}}O_l`$ which is nonnegative since $`M`$ is positive semidefinite. Lastly, if $`M`$ is positive definite then $`O_l^{}M^{\mathrm{adj}}O_l`$ is also, which means that $`\frac{d}{d\lambda _{l,j}}detM`$ is positive. The lemma follows. $``$

Applying Lemma 4.2 to the Riemann sums for the integral (3) above, using the bound in Equation (4), and taking limits, gives

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill det_{_FX}& DdB_{(F_s(y),\theta )}(,)d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\hfill \\ & \left(\frac{h(g_0)}{c}\right)^ndet_{_FX}O_\theta \left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 0\\ 0& I_{n\mathrm{rank}(X)}\end{array}\right)O_\theta ^{}𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`I_{n\mathrm{rank}(X)}`$ is the identity matrix of dimension $`n\mathrm{rank}(X)`$.

Next we observe that, relative to the orthonormal basis $`\{e_1,\mathrm{},e_{\mathrm{rank}(X)}\}`$ for $`T_{F_s(y)}X`$, the expression

$$_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y),\theta )}^2𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

may be written in the form

$$Q_1=_{_FX}O_\theta \left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0_{1\times (n1)}\\ 0_{(n1)\times 1}& 0_{(n1)\times (n1)}\end{array}\right)O_\theta ^{}𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

where $`O_\theta `$ is the same matrix as above. Let

$$Q_2=_{_FX}O_\theta \left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 0\\ 0& I_{n\mathrm{rank}(X)}\end{array}\right)O_\theta ^{}𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta )$$

We have just shown that, to prove Theorem 4.1, it suffices to prove that

$$\frac{detQ_1}{(detQ_2)^2}C$$
(5)
for some constant $`C`$. The rest of this section will be devoted to proving this.

### 4.4 Eigenvalue matching

Here is the general idea of our proof of Theorem 4.1, which we have reduced to showing (5) above. Since the numerator is bounded above, we consider when the matrix $`Q_2`$ in the denominator has any eigenvalues smaller than a certain constant depending only on the dimension of $`X`$. When this occurs, Theorem 4.4 below will show that each such eigenvalue is matched by at least two smaller (up to a universal constant) eigenvalues of the matrix $`Q_1`$ in the numerator.

Let $`\{v_i\}`$ be an orthonormal eigenbasis for the symmetric matrix $`Q_2`$, and recall that $`\{e_i\}`$ is a basis for the tangent space $``$ to the fixed, chosen flat. Note that the $`i`$-th eigenvalue of the matrix $`Q_2`$ may be written as

$$L_i=v_i^{}Q_2v_i=_{_FX}\underset{j=\mathrm{rank}(X)+1}{\overset{n}{}}O_\theta .e_j,v_i^2d\sigma _y^s(\theta ).$$

We first argue that no $`L_i`$ equals zero. Since $`s>h(g)`$ we have that the measures $`\mu _y^s`$ is a finite measure in the Lebesgue class ($`dg`$). Since the $`\nu _x`$ for $`xX`$ are positive on any open set (with respect to the cone topology) of $`_FX`$, it follows that $`\sigma _y^s`$ is as well. In particular, $`\{O_\theta |\theta \mathrm{supp}(\sigma _y^s)=_FX\}`$ is isomorphic to the group $`K`$ and therefore there is no nonzero subspace $`VT_{F_s(y)}X`$ such that $`O_\theta V`$ for all $`\theta _FX`$. Hence none of the eigenvalues $`L_i`$ are $`0`$.

Let $`ϵ=1/(\mathrm{rank}(X)+1)`$. Note that $`ϵ`$ is a constant depending only on $`n`$, as there are only finitely many symmetric spaces of a given rank and given dimension. Suppose $`k`$ of the eigenvalues are strictly less than $`ϵ`$. Since each $`L_i1`$, and since

$$\underset{i}{}L_i=\mathrm{Tr}Q_2=n\mathrm{rank}(X)$$

it follows easily that $`k\mathrm{rank}(X)`$. By rearranging the order we may assume that $`L_i<ϵ`$ for $`i=1,\mathrm{},k`$.

Let $`H`$ be an inner product space over R, and denote by $`\mathrm{SO}(H)`$ the special orthogonal group of $`H`$. Scale the bi-invariant metric on $`\mathrm{SO}(H)`$ so that $`\mathrm{SO}(H)`$ has diameter $`\pi /2`$. Define the angle between two subspaces $`V,WH`$ as

$$\mathrm{}(V,W):=inf\{d_{\mathrm{SO}(H)}(I,P):P\mathrm{SO}(H)\text{ with }PVW\text{ or }PWV\}$$

Let $`\pi _V(W)`$ represent the orthogonal projection of $`W`$ onto $`V`$. Then it is routine to verify the following properties of the angle:

1. $`\mathrm{}(V,W)\frac{\pi }{2}`$
2. $`\mathrm{}(V,W)=\mathrm{}(W^{},V^{}`$)
3. $`\mathrm{}(V,W)=\mathrm{}(W,V)`$
4. If $`VU`$ and $`dimUdimW`$ then $`\mathrm{}(V,W)\mathrm{}(U,W)`$, or
if $`VU`$ and $`dimVdimW`$ then $`\mathrm{}(V,W)\mathrm{}(U,W)`$
5. If $`\mathrm{}V,W=0`$ then $`VW`$ or $`WV`$
6. If $`UW`$ then $`\mathrm{}(\pi _V(U),U)\mathrm{}(\pi _V(U),W)\mathrm{}(V,W)`$

For a $`1`$-dimensional subspace $`V`$ spanned by a vector $`v`$, our definition of angle agrees with the usual definition:

1. $`V=\text{span}\{v\}\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{}(V,W))=\frac{v,\pi _W(v)}{|v||\pi _v(W)|}`$

Finally, $`\mathrm{}`$ satisfies the following form of the triangle inequality.

###### Lemma 4.3 (Triangle inequality for $`\mathrm{}`$).

Let $`U,V,W`$ be subspaces of a fixed inner product space $`H`$. Suppose that $`dimU=dimWdimV`$. Then

$$\mathrm{}(V,W)\mathrm{}(U,V)+\mathrm{}(U,W)$$

Proof.  By definition of $`\mathrm{}`$ there exist $`P_1,P_2,P_3\mathrm{SO}(H)`$ with

* $`P_1WV`$ and $`\mathrm{}(V,W)=d_{\mathrm{SO}(H)}(I,P_1)`$.
* $`P_2UV`$ and $`\mathrm{}(U,V)=d_{\mathrm{SO}(H)}(I,P_2)`$.
* $`P_3U=W`$ and $`\mathrm{}(U,W)=d_{\mathrm{SO}(H)}(I,P_3)`$.

Now $`P_2P_3^1WV`$ so that

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d(I,P_1)& d(I,P_2P_3^1)\hfill \\ & \\ & =d(P_2,P_3)\hfill \\ & \\ & d(I,P_2)+d(I,P_3)\hfill \end{array}$$

and we are done.

$``$

One of the main ingredients in the proof of Theorem 4.1 is the following.

###### Theorem 4.4 (Eigenvalue Matching Theorem).

For any $`k`$-frame given by orthonormal vectors $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_k`$ of $`T_xX`$ with $`k\mathrm{rank}(X)`$ there is an orthonormal $`2k`$-frame given by vectors $`v_1^{},v_1^{\prime \prime }\mathrm{},v_k^{},v_k^{\prime \prime }`$, each perpendicular to $`\mathrm{span}\{v_1,\mathrm{},v_k\}`$, such that for $`i=1,\mathrm{},k`$ and all $`hK`$, there is a constant $`C`$, depending only on $`dimX`$, such that

$$\mathrm{}(hv_i^{},^{})C\mathrm{}(hv_i,)$$

and

$$\mathrm{}(hv_i^{\prime \prime },^{})C\mathrm{}(hv_i,)$$

where $`hv`$ represents the linear (derivative) action of $`K`$ on $`vT_xX`$.

We will prove Theorem 4.4 in the next section; its proof is independent of the rest of the paper.

### 4.5 Proof of the Jacobian Estimate

Assuming Theorem 4.4 for the moment, we now complete the proof of Theorem 4.1.

Proof of Theorem 4.1.  From equation (2) and the reduction in §4.3 we see that it is sufficient to show that

$$\frac{detQ_1}{(detQ_2)^2}C$$

for some constant $`C`$ depending only on $`n`$.

As before let $`L_1,\mathrm{},L_k`$ be the $`k\mathrm{rank}(X)`$ eigenvalues of $`Q_2`$ which are strictly less than $`ϵ=1/(\mathrm{rank}(X)+1)`$. If no such eigenvalues exist, then there is a lower bound on $`Q_2`$ depending only on $`\mathrm{rank}(X)`$. As there is an upper bound on $`Q_1`$, we are done (see the discussion on dependency of constants above). So we assume $`k1`$.

Let $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_k`$ be an orthonormal set of associated eigenvectors. Recall that $`\{e_i\}`$ denotes the chosen orthonormal basis for the $`T_{F_s(y)}X`$ such that $`e_1,\mathrm{},e_{\mathrm{rank}(X)}`$ spans the tangent space $``$ to the fixed maximal flat.

For any vector $`vT_{F_s(y)}X`$ let

$$r(v)=\underset{j=\mathrm{rank}(X)+1}{\overset{n}{}}e_j,v^2$$

so that

$$L_i=_{_FX}r(O_\theta ^{}v_i)𝑑\sigma _y^s(\theta ).$$

Since $`e_1,\mathrm{},e_{\mathrm{rank}(X)}`$ form an orthonormal basis for $``$, for any unit vector $`v`$ we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{}(v,))\hfill & =v,\pi _{}(v)/|\pi _{}(v)|\hfill \\ & =v,v,e_je_j/(v,e_j^2)^{1/2}\hfill \\ & =(v,e_j^2)^{1/2}\hfill \end{array}$$

so that

$$\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{}(v,))^2=\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{rank}(X)}{}}v,e_j^2$$

Hence

$`r(v)`$ $`=1{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{rank}(X)}{}}}\mathrm{cos}^2(\mathrm{}v,e_j)`$
$`=1\mathrm{cos}^2(\mathrm{}v,)`$
$`=\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}v,)`$
Similarly

$$v,e_1^2\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{rank}(X)}{}}v,e_j^2=\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}v,^{})$$

For each $`i=1,\mathrm{},k`$, let $`v_i^{}`$ and $`v_i^{\prime \prime }`$ be the pair of vectors corresponding to $`v_i`$ produced by the Eigenvalue Matching Theorem (Theorem 4.4). That theorem together with the concavity of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta `$ for $`0\theta \pi /2`$ gives, for all $`\theta _FX`$ and for each $`w_i=v_i^{}`$ or $`v_i^{\prime \prime }`$, that

$$\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}w,^{})\mathrm{sin}^2(C\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}v_i,)C\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}v_i,)$$

where $`C>1`$ is the constant in the Eigenvalue Matching Theorem.

Furthermore, $`Q_1`$ is the integral (against a probability measure) of matrices with all eigenvalues less than $`1`$ so no eigenvalue of $`Q_1`$ is greater than one. Hence we may estimate

$`detQ_1`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}(v_i^{}.Q_1.v_i^{})(v_i^{\prime \prime }.Q_1.v_i^{\prime \prime })`$
$`={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}e_1,O_\theta ^{}.v_i^{}^2d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}e_1,O_\theta ^{}.v_i^{\prime \prime }^2d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}.v_i^{},^{})d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}.v_i^{\prime \prime },^{})d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}C\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}.v_i,)d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)\left({\displaystyle _{_FX}}C\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{}O_\theta ^{}.v_i,)d\sigma _y^s(\theta )\right)`$
$`=C^k{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}L_i^2`$
$`=C^kdetQ_2^2{\displaystyle \underset{i=k+1}{\overset{n}{}}}L_i^2`$
$`C^kdetQ_2^2(\mathrm{rank}(X)+1)^{2(nk)}`$
The last inequality follows from the definition of $`k`$, whereby $`L_i\frac{1}{\mathrm{rank}(X)+1}`$ for each $`i>k`$.

The constant $`C`$ in Theorem 4.1 may be taken to be the product (over factors $`X_j`$ of $`X`$ with dimension $`n_j`$),

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}^n}\underset{j}{}C_j^{\mathrm{rank}(X)/2}c_j^{n_j}(\mathrm{rank}(X_j)+1)^{(n_j)}$$

where $`C_j1`$ is the constant $`C`$ from Theorem 4.4, $`c_j`$ is the constant $`c`$ in Equation (4) and $`k_j`$ is the constant $`k`$ above. This combined constant depends only on $`n=dimX`$. $``$

### 4.6 A cautionary example

In the general method of \[BCG1\] as well as here, one is solving a minimization problem without regard to the measure. However, at least in the $`\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$ case, to get a bound on the Jacobian of $`F_s`$ one must use further properties of the measure, as indicated by the example we now give.

If for a single flat $`_x`$ and a sequence of $`y_i_x`$, the measures $`\sigma _{y_i}^s`$ tend to the sum of Dirac measures $`\frac{1}{2}\delta _{b^+(\mathrm{})}+\frac{1}{2}\delta _{wb^+(\mathrm{})}`$ where $`w`$ is in the Weyl group for $`_x`$, then we claim that $`\mathrm{Jac}F_s(y_i)\mathrm{}`$. First note that the sum

$$dB_{(F_s(y_i),b^+(\mathrm{}))}^2+dB_{(F_s(y_i),wb^+(\mathrm{}))}^2$$

has only a $`3`$-dimensional kernel, while

$$DdB_{(F_s(y_i),b^+(\mathrm{}))}+DdB_{(F_s(y_i),wb^+(\mathrm{}))}$$

has a $`2`$-dimensional kernel. Furthermore

$$Q_1=_{_FX}𝑑B_{(F_s(y_i),\theta )}^2𝑑\sigma _{y_i}^s\text{and}Q_2=_{_FX}D𝑑B_{(F_s(y_i),\theta )}𝑑\sigma _{y_i}^s$$

degenerate in the same way, so that $`det(Q_1)/det(Q_2)^2`$ is unbounded. This can be easily verified explicitly in the case of a sum of five Dirac measures for which both integrals are nonsingular degenerating to the sum of the two Dirac measures given above.

A similar problem occurs when there are $`\text{H}^2`$ factors.

## 5 Proof of the Eigenvalue Matching Theorem

In order to prove Theorem 4.4 we will need a series of lemmas.

### 5.1 Dimension inequalities

For any $`xX`$ and any subspace $`VT_xX`$, denote by $`K_V`$ the elements of $`K`$ which stabilize $`V`$ (i.e. leave $`V`$ invariant). For $`V`$, if $`\mathrm{Fix}_K(V)`$ is the subgroup of $`K`$ which fixes $`V`$ pointwise then $`K_V=U\mathrm{Fix}_K(V)`$ where $`U`$ is the subgroup stabilizing $`V`$ of the (discrete) Weyl group which stabilizes $``$ (see \[Eb\]).

The following lemma is a basic algebraic ingredient in the proof of Theorem 4.4.

###### Lemma 5.1 (Dimension inequality, I).

With the above notations,

$$dim\left(\mathrm{span}\{K_V\}^{}\right)2dim(V).$$

Proof.  First we show that $`K_V`$ is itself a subspace hence equal to its span.

Recognize that $`K_V`$ is the union of all tangent spaces to flats which contain $`V`$. Pick a basis $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_l`$ of $`V`$ note that $`K_V=_{i=1}^l(v_i)`$ where $`(v_i)`$ is the union of all the tangent spaces to flats containing $`v_i`$ using the notation of \[Eb\]. Proposition 2.11.4 of \[Eb\] states that $`(v_i)=\text{R}^r\times X_i`$ for some symmetric space of noncompact type and $`r\mathrm{rank}(X)`$. In particular it is a manifold and the tangent space to it corresponds to $`K_{v_i}`$, which is a vector space. Then $`K_V`$ is a vector space.

Let $`K_{}`$ be the stabilizer of $``$ in $`K`$. Then $`K_{}WK_V`$ where $`W`$ denotes the Weyl group (a finite group). Hence $`dimK_{}=dim(K_{}K_V)`$. Hence

$$dimK_V=dimK_V+dimdimK_{}$$

Since $`X=K`$ we obtain

$$dimM=dimK+dimdimK_{}.$$

Putting this together we obtain,

$$(dim\mathrm{span}\{K_VF\})^{}=dimMdimK_V=dimKdimK_V.$$

But Lemma 5.2 below gives that this final term is $`2dimV`$, as desired. $``$

The following lemma was used in the proof of Lemma 5.1. Recall that, at this point, we are assuming that the symmetric space $`X`$ is irreducible and has $`\mathrm{rank}(X)2`$.

###### Lemma 5.2 (Dimension inequality, II).

Assume that $`X\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$. Then for any subspace $`V`$, we have

$$dimK2dimV+dimK_V.$$

This lemma is the only place where $`X\mathrm{SL}_3(\text{R})/\mathrm{SO}_3(\text{R})`$ is used.

Proof.  For a root $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ in $``$, define $`𝔨_\alpha =(\mathrm{Id}+\theta _p)𝔤_\alpha `$, where $`\theta _p`$ is the Cartan involution at $`p=F_s(y)`$. Then by Proposition 2.14.2 of \[Eb\] we have that $`𝔨_\alpha =𝔤_\alpha 𝔤_\alpha 𝔨`$, $`𝔨_\alpha =𝔨_\alpha `$, and $`dim𝔨_\alpha 1`$.

Note that from the definition of $`𝔤_\alpha `$ it follows immediately that

$$𝔨_\alpha =\{Y𝔨|[X,Y]=0\text{ for all }X\mathrm{ker}\alpha \}.$$

Note that in $`G`$ the normalizer mod centralizer is finite for any flat subspace. Therefore for any $`V`$ we may write the Lie algebra $`𝔨_V`$ of $`K_V`$ as,

$$𝔨_V=\{Y𝔨|[X,Y]=0\text{ for all }XV\}.$$

It then follows from the previous statements that,

$$𝔨_V=𝔨_0+\underset{\stackrel{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }}{V\mathrm{ker}\alpha }}{}𝔨_\alpha .$$

Consequently, we may assume that $`V`$ in the statement of the lemma is maximally singular: $`V`$ may be written as the intersection of the kernels of the greatest number of roots among all subspaces of dimension $`dimV`$. Otherwise $`dimK_V=dim𝔨_V`$ is strictly smaller than it would be if $`V`$ were maximally singular.

Recall that we have the invariant inner product $`\varphi _p`$ on $`𝔞`$ and hence on $``$. Let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ denote the collection of roots. For $`\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }`$, let $`H_\alpha `$ denote the dual root vector (with respect to $`\varphi _p`$) corresponding to $`\alpha `$. For any subset $`V`$ we define the function

$$\mathrm{card}_R(V):=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{card}\{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }|H_\alpha V\}.$$

Since root vectors lying in a subspace always come in opposing pairs, $`\mathrm{card}_R`$ is a positive integer.

Let $`\alpha `$ be any root. Note that if a subspace $`V\mathrm{ker}\alpha `$, then $`H_\alpha `$ lies in $`V^{}`$. Therefore the statement of the lemma reduces to showing that

$$dim𝔨_0+\underset{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }}{}dim𝔨_\alpha 2dimV+dim𝔨_0+\underset{\stackrel{\alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }}{V\mathrm{ker}\alpha }}{}dim𝔨_\alpha ,$$

or more simply,

$$\underset{H_\alpha 𝔉V^{}}{}dim𝔨_\alpha 2dimV.$$

Swapping $`V^{}`$ for $`V`$ and vice versa, and using $`dim𝔨_\alpha 1`$ for each $`\alpha `$, it is sufficient to prove that

$$\mathrm{card}_R(V)2(\mathrm{rank}(X)dimV).$$
(6)
Since we are assuming that $`G`$ is simple, we could check this condition by using a classification of root vectors in the simple algebras such as in \[Va\]. However, because this would be tedious we will instead give a synthetic proof.

For each $`i=0,\mathrm{},\mathrm{rank}(X)`$, we say that $`W_i`$ is a maximally rooted subspace of dimension $`i`$ if

$$\mathrm{card}_R(W_i)=\mathrm{max}\{\mathrm{card}_R(V):V\text{ with }dimV=i\}.$$

In other words, $`W_i`$ is maximally rooted if $`W_i^{}`$ is maximally singular. We claim that if $`0=W_0,W_1,\mathrm{},W_{\mathrm{rank}(X)}=`$ are any maximally rooted subspaces of $``$ with $`dimW_i=i`$, then for $`0<i\mathrm{rank}(X)`$,

$$\mathrm{card}_R(W_i)i+\mathrm{card}_R(W_{i1})$$
(7)
This is true for $`i=1`$ since $`W_1`$ is one dimensional it contains a root vector pair and the trivial subspace $`W_0`$ contains none. By induction, assume the claim holds for all maximally rooted subspace $`W_i`$ of dimension $`i<j`$. In particular, for such a space $`W_{j1}`$ and for any subspace $`ZW_{j1}`$ of codimension one, $`\mathrm{card}_R(Z)\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j2})`$ so

$$\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j1}Z)=\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j1})\mathrm{card}_R(Z)j1.$$

We claim that there exists a root vector $`H_\alpha `$ which is not in $`W_{j1}`$ or its perpendicular $`W_{j1}^{}`$ (with respect to $`\varphi _p`$). If not, then every root vector either lies in $`W_{j1}`$ or $`W_{j1}^{}`$ which implies the root system is reducible (e.g. Corollary 27.5 of \[Hu2\]), and hence $`G`$ is reducible, contrary to assumption.

Therefore, $`H_\alpha ^{}W_{j1}`$ is a codimension one subspace of $`W_{j1}`$ and by inductive hypothesis there are at least $`j1`$ distinct pairs of root vectors $`\pm H_{\alpha _1},\mathrm{},\pm H_{\alpha _{j1}}`$ in $`W_{j1}(H_\alpha ^{}W_{j1})`$. For each of these we have $`\varphi _p(H_\alpha ,H_{\alpha _l})0`$. By the standard calculus of roots (e.g. Proposition 2.9.3 of \[Eb\]) this implies that for each $`1lj1`$ either $`\pm (H_\alpha +H_{\alpha _l})`$ or $`\pm (H_\alpha H_{\alpha _l})`$ is a pair of root vectors lying in $`W_{j1}H_\alpha `$ which does not lie in $`W_{j1}`$. Including $`H_\alpha `$, these form at least $`j`$ pairs of root vectors which are contained in $`W_{j1}H_\alpha W_{j1}`$. Therefore $`\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j1}H_\alpha )\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j1})+j`$. Since by definition of $`W_j`$, $`\mathrm{card}_R(W_j)\mathrm{card}_R(W_{j1}H_\alpha )`$, the claim follows.

Recursively applying Equation 7 shows that for $`0i<j\mathrm{rank}(X)`$,

$$\mathrm{card}_R(W_j)\mathrm{card}_R(W_i)\underset{k=i}{\overset{j}{}}k=\frac{j(j+1)}{2}\frac{i(i+1)}{2}.$$

Now to prove the inequality (6), as noted before we may assume $`V`$ of dimension $`q`$ is maximally rooted, since then $`V^{}`$ is maximally singular. Since $``$ is a maximally rooted space, the above expression reads

$$\mathrm{card}_R(V)=\mathrm{card}_R()\mathrm{card}_R(V)=\frac{\mathrm{rank}(X)(\mathrm{rank}(X)+1)}{2}\frac{q(q+1)}{2}.$$

This is readily seen to be greater that $`2(\mathrm{rank}(X)q)`$ unless $`\mathrm{rank}(X)=2`$ and $`q=0`$ ($`V=`$). However, every irreducible Lie algebras of rank two other than $`𝔰𝔩(3,\text{R})`$ has at least four pairs of roots (see \[Hu1\], p.44, Figure 1), and hence the inequality (6) is satisfied in all of the required cases. $``$

### 5.2 Angle inequalities

###### Lemma 5.3 (Angle inequality, I).

For any subspace $`V`$ there is a subspace $`V^{}V^{}`$ with $`dimV^{}2dimV`$ and a constant $`C`$ depending only on the symmetric space $`X`$ such that for all $`kK`$,

$$\mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})C\mathrm{}(kV,)$$

where $`kV`$ represents the linear (derivative) action of $`K`$ on $`VT_xX`$.

Proof.  For any subspace $`V`$, let $`U_1,U_2,\mathrm{},U_{l(V)}`$ be the maximally singular subspaces of dimension $`dimV`$ which have minimal angle with $`V`$. Define $`S_V=U_1\mathrm{}U_{l(V)}`$. If $`G(r,)`$ denotes the Grassmann variety of subspaces in $``$ with dimension $`r`$, then the set of $`VG(r,)`$ for which $`l(V)`$ is constant has codimension $`l(V)1`$ in $`G(r,)`$.

For any subspace $`V`$ we define a subspace $`V^{}^{}`$ by

$$V^{}=(\mathrm{span}\{K_{S_V}\})^{}$$

where $`K_{S_V}`$ is the subgroup of $`K`$ which stabilizes $`S_V`$. By Proposition 5.1, $`V^{}`$ has dimension at least $`2dimV`$ since we always have $`K_{S_V}K_U`$ for some $`U`$ with $`dimU=dimV`$.

If no such constant $`C`$ as in the lemma exists then there is a sequence $`k_iK`$ and $`V_i`$ with $`dimV_i=r`$ such that

$$\frac{\mathrm{}(k_iV_i,)}{\mathrm{}(k_iV_i^{},^{})}0.$$
(8)
Now since $`S_V`$ and hence $`V^{}`$ varies upper semicontinuously in $`V`$ (thinking of the map $`VV^{}`$ as a self-map of $`G(r,)`$), it follows from the continuity of the $`\mathrm{}`$ function that

$$\frac{\mathrm{}(kV,)}{\mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})}$$

is lower semicontinuous in $`V`$.

However since both $`K`$ and $`G(r,)`$ are compact, for some subsequence of the $`k_iV_i`$, the $`k_i`$ converge to $`k_0K`$ and the $`V_i`$ converge to a fixed subspace $`V_0`$. Furthermore, $`k_0V_0`$ lies in $``$ since $`\mathrm{}(k_0V_0,)`$ must be $`0`$. It follows that $`k_0WK_{V_0}`$ where $`W`$ is the Weyl group stabilizing $``$.

By construction, $`K_{V_0}K_{V_0^{}}`$ and for any $`wW`$,

$$\mathrm{}(wV_0^{},^{})=\mathrm{}(V_0^{},w^1^{})=\mathrm{}(V_0^{},^{}).$$

Therefore, we also have $`\mathrm{}(k_0V_0^{},^{})=0`$. Continuity of $`\mathrm{}`$ along with the fact that $`WK`$ acts isometrically implies that it is sufficient to show that for any fixed subspace $`V`$ the quantity

$$\underset{kK_V}{lim\; inf}\frac{\mathrm{}(kV,)}{\mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})}$$

is bounded away from $`0`$. Note that since this quantity is lower semicontinuous in $`V`$, and since $`G(r,)`$ is compact, it is unnecessary to show that the bound is independent of $`V`$.

First we handle the denominator. Using the bi-invariance of the metric on $`\mathrm{SO}(n)`$, the properties of the angle function, and the fact that for all $`k_0K_{S_V}`$ we have $`k_0kk^1K_{S_V}`$, it follows that

$`d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k,K_{S_V})=d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k^1,K_{S_V})`$ $`=d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(K_{S_V}k,Id)`$
$`inf\{d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(\mathrm{Id},P):P\mathrm{SO}(n)\text{ with }Pk^1K_{S_V}\}`$
$`=\mathrm{}(`$$`\{K_{S_V}\},k^1)`$
$`=\mathrm{}(kK_{S_V},)`$
$`=\mathrm{}((kK_{S_V})^{},^{})`$
$`=\mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})`$
So it remains to show that for any sequence $`k_ik^VK_V`$ in any fixed neighborhood $`U`$ of $`K_V`$, that $`\mathrm{}(k_iV,)Cd_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k_i,K_{S_V})`$. Furthermore, since $`\mathrm{}(k_iV,)=\mathrm{}(k_i(k_i^V)^1V,)`$ for any $`k_i^VK_V`$, we may assume that $`k_i\mathrm{Id}`$.

By Theorem 2.10.1 of \[Va\], in a sufficiently small neighborhood of $`\mathrm{Id}`$ we may uniquely write $`k_i`$ as $`k_i=\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{k}_i^{})\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{k}_i^S)`$ where $`\mathrm{k}_i^S𝔨_{S_{V_0}}`$ and $`\mathrm{k}_i^{}𝔨_{S_{V_0}}^{}`$. Furthermore $`\mathrm{k}_i^S0`$ and $`\mathrm{k}_i^{}0`$.

Bi-invariance of the metric on $`\mathrm{SO}(n)`$ implies that for $`|\mathrm{k}_i^{}|<\frac{\pi }{2},`$

$$d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k_i,K_{S_V})=d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{k}_i^{}),K_{S_V})=|\mathrm{k}_i^{}|.$$

Now $`K_V`$ is the only subgroup of $`K`$ which both leaves $`V`$ in $``$ and also intersects all sufficiently small neighborhoods of the identity. Therefore, in order to show that $`\mathrm{}(k_iV,)C|\mathrm{k}_i^{}|`$, we need only show that

$$d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k_i,K_V)/|k_i^{}|\to ̸0$$

Well, the Cambell-Baker-Hausdorff formula implies that

$$\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{k}_i^{})\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{k}_i^S)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{k}_i^{}+\mathrm{k}_i^S+O(|\mathrm{k}_i^{}||\mathrm{k}_i^S|)\right).$$

Since the definition of $`S_V`$ implies that $`𝔨_{S_V}𝔨_V`$ and $`\mathrm{k}_i^{}`$ is perpendicular to $`𝔨_{S_V}`$, we have

$$d_{\mathrm{SO}(n)}(k_i,K_V)|\mathrm{k}_i^{}|+O(|\mathrm{k}_i^{}||\mathrm{k}_i^S|).$$

Since we had $`|\mathrm{k}_i^S|0`$ this finishes the lemma.

$``$

###### Lemma 5.4 (Angle inequality, II).

For any subspace $`V`$ of $`T_xX`$ with $`dimV\mathrm{rank}(X)`$, there is a subspace $`V^{}V`$ with $`dimV^{}2dimV`$, and a constant $`C`$ depending only on $`n`$, such that

$$\mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})C\mathrm{}(kV,)\text{for all}kK$$

Proof.  The first step of the proof is to reduce to the case when $`V`$ is a subspace of $``$, so that Lemma 5.3 may be applied.

We first observe that the lemma is true if and only if it is true with $`V`$ replaced by $`k_0V`$ for any fixed $`k_0K`$. Since $`K`$ is compact we may therefore choose $`V`$ among all $`kV,kK`$ so that $`\mathrm{}(V,)\mathrm{}(kV,)`$ for all $`kK`$.

With this assumption, consider the projection $`W=\pi _F(V)`$ of $`V`$ onto $``$. By Lemma 5.3, we obtain a subspace $`W^{}`$ such that

$$\mathrm{}(kW^{},^{})C\mathrm{}(kW,)$$

for all $`kK`$. Then we let $`V^{}`$ be the projection of $`W^{}`$ onto $`V^{}`$. By the properties of the angle function (see 4.4), it follows that

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \mathrm{}(kV^{},^{})& \mathrm{}(kW^{},^{})+\mathrm{}(kV^{},kW^{})\hfill & \text{by Lemma }\text{4.3}\hfill \\ & & \\ & C\mathrm{}(kW^{},^{})+\mathrm{}(V^{},W^{})\hfill & \\ & & \\ & C\mathrm{}(kW,)+\mathrm{}(V^{},W^{})\hfill & \text{since }(W^{})^{}W\hfill \\ & & \\ & C\mathrm{}(kW,)+\mathrm{}V,\hfill & \text{for same reason}\hfill \\ & & \\ & =C\mathrm{}(kW,)+\mathrm{}(V,)\hfill & \text{since }W=\pi _F(V)\hfill \end{array}$$

Thus it suffices to bound $`\mathrm{}(kW,)`$ by a constant times $`\mathrm{}(kV,)`$. But

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \mathrm{}(kW,)& \mathrm{}(kV,)+\mathrm{}(kV,kW)\hfill & \text{by Lemma }\text{4.3}\hfill \\ & & \\ & =\mathrm{}(kV,)+\mathrm{}(V,W)\hfill & \\ & & \\ & =\mathrm{}(kV,)+\mathrm{}(V,)\hfill & \text{as }W=\pi _F(V)\hfill \\ & & \\ & \mathrm{}(kV,)+\mathrm{}(kV,)\hfill & \text{by minimality}\hfill \\ & & \\ & =2\mathrm{}(kV,)\hfill & \end{array}$$

and we are done. $``$

### 5.3 Finishing the proof of the Eigenvalue Matching Theorem

Armed with the lemmas of the previous two subsections, we now prove Theorem 4.4.

We begin by noting that the construction of $`V^{}`$ from $`V`$ above respects subspace inclusion. I.e. if $`UV`$ then $`U^{}V^{}`$. This follows from the definition of $`V^{}`$ and the fact that for two singular subspaces $`U_1`$ and $`U_2`$ with $`U_1U_2`$, we have $`K_{U_1}(WK_{U_2})K_{U_2}`$, where $`W`$ is the Weyl group.

Now we simply proceed by induction on the number of vectors $`k`$. For $`k=1`$ we set $`V=v_1`$ the statement of the proposition follows from Lemma 5.4. Order the vectors by increasing angle with $``$. Assume the proposition for $`k1`$ vectors, then set $`V_k=\mathrm{span}\{v_1,\mathrm{},v_k\}`$. By Lemma 5.4 we have an orthogonal subspace of twice the dimension of $`V_k`$, namely $`V_k^{}`$, which we may write by the preceeding paragraph as $`V_k^{}=V_{k1}^{}W^{}`$ where $`W^{}`$ is two dimensional. The same lemma also guarantees that $`\mathrm{}W^{},^{}C\mathrm{}v_k,`$, since $`\mathrm{}v_k,=\mathrm{}V_k,`$.

This completes the proof of Theorem 4.4.

## 6 Finishing the proof of the Degree Theorem

We will break the proof of Theorem 1.1 into the compact and noncompact cases.

### 6.1 The compact case

Suppose $`M`$ and $`N`$ are compact. Since for $`s>h(g)`$, $`F_s`$ is a $`C^1`$ map, using Proposition 3.2 and elementary integration theory yields,

$`|\mathrm{deg}(f)|\mathrm{Vol}(M)`$ $`=|\mathrm{deg}(f)|{\displaystyle _M}𝑑g_0`$ $`=\left|{\displaystyle _N}f^{}𝑑g_0\right|`$ (9)
$`=\left|{\displaystyle _N}F_s^{}𝑑g_0\right|`$ (10)
$`{\displaystyle _N}\left|\mathrm{Jac}F_s\right|𝑑g`$ $`C\left({\displaystyle \frac{s}{h(g_0)}}\right)^n\mathrm{Vol}(N)`$ (11)
For the last inequality we have used the principal estimate from Theorem 4.1. Rearranging terms gives us the inequality in Theorem 1.1 since $`C`$ depends only on the dimension and $`\left(\frac{s}{h(g_0)}\right)^n`$ depends only on $`n`$ and the smallest Ricci curvatures of $`M`$ and $`N`$.

### 6.2 The noncompact case

We now consider the case when $`N`$ (and/or $`M`$) has finite volume but is not compact. In this setting, it is not known whether the limit in the definition of $`h(g)`$ always exists. For this reason we will define the quantity $`h(g)`$ to be

$$h(g)=inf\left\{s0\right|C>0\text{ such that }yY,_Ye^{sd(y,z)}𝑑g(z)<C\}.$$

In fact this agrees with the previous definition for $`h(g)`$ when $`N`$ is compact. In the case of the symmetric space $`(M,g_0)`$ this definition of $`h(g_0)`$ agrees with the previous definition for compact manifolds.

For the finite volume case, the main difficulty is that, in order for the proof given above to work, we need to know that $`F_s`$ is proper (and thus surjective since $`\mathrm{deg}(F_s)=\mathrm{deg}(f)0`$). For this, we will need to prove higher rank analogs of some lemmas used in \[BCS\] for the rank one case. For the basics of degree theory for proper maps between noncompact spaces, see \[FG\]. We will need to assume that the geometry of $`N`$ is bounded in the sense that its Ricci curvatures are bounded from above and that the injectivity radius of its universal cover $`Y`$ is bounded from below. These are the specific assumptions implied in the third remark after the theorem.

We will show that $`F_s`$ is proper by essentially showing that the barycenter of $`\sigma _y^s`$ lies nearby a convex set containing large mass for this measure. This convex set is in turn far away from $`\varphi (p)`$ whenever $`x`$ is far from $`pY`$. We achieve this by first estimating the concentration of the mass of $`\sigma _y^s`$ in certain cones which will be our convex sets. One difficulty that arises in the higher rank is that these cones must have a certain angle when restricted to a flat. Another difficulty is that the ends of $`M`$ can have large angle at infinity. In fact our methods breakdown unless we control the asymptotic expansion of $`f`$ down the ends (see Remarks 6.3).

First, we localize the barycenter of the measure $`\sigma _y^s`$. Let $`v_{(x,\theta )}`$ be the unit vector in $`S_xX`$ pointing to $`\theta X`$.

###### Lemma 6.1.

Let $`KX`$ and $`yY`$ be such that $`(\varphi _{}\mu _y^s)(K)>C`$ for some constant $`1>C>\frac{1}{2}`$. Suppose that for all $`xX`$ there exists $`vS_xX`$ such that for all $`zK`$:

$$_{_FX}v_{(x,\theta )},v𝑑\nu _z(\theta )\frac{1}{C}1$$

Then

$$x\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y)$$

Proof.  If $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y)=x`$ then $`_x_{s,y}(x)=0`$. However, $`_x_{s,y}(x)`$ may be expressed as

$$_X_{_FX}v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _z(\theta )𝑑\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(z)$$

where $`v_{(x,\theta )}`$ is the unit vector in $`S_xX`$ pointing to $`\theta _FX`$. Then we have

$`D_x_{s,y}`$ $`={\displaystyle _X}{\displaystyle _{_FX}}v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _z(\theta )𝑑\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(z)`$
$`{\displaystyle _K}{\displaystyle _{_FX}}v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _z(\theta )𝑑\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(z)`$
$`{\displaystyle _{XK}}{\displaystyle _{_FX}}v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _z(\theta )𝑑\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(z)`$
$`{\displaystyle _K}{\displaystyle _{_FX}}v_{(x,\theta )},v𝑑\nu _z(\theta )𝑑\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(z)\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(XK)`$
$`\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(K)\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{C}}1\right)1+\varphi _{}\mu _y^s(K)`$
$`>C\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{C}}1\right)1+C=0`$
The strictness of the inequality finishes the proof. $``$

For $`vSX`$ and $`\alpha >0`$ consider the convex cone,

$$E_{(v,\alpha )}=\mathrm{exp}_{\pi (v)}\left\{wT_{\pi (v)}X|\mathrm{}_{\pi (v)}(v(\mathrm{}),w(\mathrm{}))\alpha \right\},$$

where $`\pi :TXX`$ is the tangent bundle projection.

Denote by $`E_{(v,\alpha )}X`$ its boundary at infinity.

###### Lemma 6.2.

There exists $`T_0>0`$ and $`\alpha _0>0`$ such that for all $`tT_0`$, all $`xX`$, all $`vS_xX`$ and all $`zE_{(g^tv,\alpha _0)}`$,

$$_{_FX}v_{(x,\theta )},v𝑑\nu _z(\theta )\frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}.$$

Proof.  Since the isometry group of the symmetric space $`X`$ is transitive on $`X`$ and for any isometry $`\psi `$, $`d\psi (E_{(v,\alpha )})=E_{(d\psi (v),\alpha )}`$, it is sufficient to prove the lemma for a fixed $`x`$ and all $`vS_xX`$.

For now choose $`\alpha _0<\pi /4`$. Take a monotone sequence $`t_i\mathrm{}`$, and any choice $`z_iE_{(g^{t_i}v,\alpha )}`$ for each $`t_i`$. It follows that some subsequence of the $`z_i`$, which we again denote by $`\{z_i\}`$, must tend to some point $`\theta E_{(v,\alpha )}`$.

Let $`\nu _\theta `$ be the weak limit of the measures $`\nu _{z_i}`$. From Theorem 2.4, $`\nu _\theta `$ is a probability measure supported on a set $`S_\theta `$ satisfying

$$\mathrm{}_x(\theta ,\xi )\frac{\pi }{4}\xi S_\theta .$$

Therefore we have,

$`{\displaystyle _{S_\theta }}v_{(x,\xi )},v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _\theta (\xi ){\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}}`$ (12)
Now whenever $`\theta E_{(v,\alpha )}`$ then $`v=v_{(x,\theta )}+ϵv^{}`$ for some unit vector $`v^{}`$ and $`ϵ\mathrm{sin}(\alpha )`$. Using either case above we may write

$$_{_FX}v_{(x,\xi )},v𝑑\nu _\theta (\xi )_{_FX}v_{(x,\xi )},v_{(x,\theta )}𝑑\nu _\theta (\xi )\mathrm{sin}(\alpha ).$$

So choosing $`\alpha `$ small enough we can guarantee that

1. any two Weyl chambers intersecting $`E_{(g^tv,\alpha )}`$ for all $`t>0`$ in the same flat must share a common face of dimension $`\mathrm{rank}(M)1`$, and
2. for any $`\theta E_{(v,\alpha )}`$,

$$_{_FX}v_{(x,\xi )},v𝑑\nu _\theta (\xi )\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2.5}.$$

Let

$$E_{(v(\mathrm{}),\alpha )}=_{t>0}E_{(g^tv,\alpha )}.$$

By the first property used in the choice of $`\alpha `$ above, for any two points $`\theta _1,\theta _2E_{(v(\mathrm{}),\alpha )}`$, either $`\theta _1`$ and $`\theta _2`$ are in the boundary of the same Weyl chamber, or else there is another point $`\theta ^{}`$ in the intersection of the boundaries at infinity of the closures of the respective Weyl chambers.

By maximality there is some $`\theta _0E_{(v(\mathrm{}),\alpha )}`$ intersecting the boundary at infinity of the closure of every Weyl chamber which intersects $`E_{(g^tv,\alpha )}`$ for all $`t>0`$. Hence, for every $`\theta E_{(v(\mathrm{}),\alpha )}`$, the support of the limit measure $`\nu _\theta `$ satisfies $`S_\theta S_{\theta _0}`$. (While $`\theta _0`$ is not necessarily unique, the support $`S_{\theta _0}`$ of the corresponding limit measure $`\nu _{\theta _0}`$ is.)

As $`t`$ increases, for any $`zE_{(g^tv,\alpha )}`$, the measures $`\nu _z`$ uniformly become increasingly concentrated on $`S_{\theta _0}`$. Then applying the estimate (12) to $`\theta =\theta _0`$, we may choose $`T_0`$ sufficiently large so that for all $`zE_{(g^tv,\alpha )}`$ with $`t>T_0`$,

$$_{_FX}v_{(x,\xi )},v𝑑\nu _z(\xi )\frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}.$$

$``$

###### Proposition 6.3.

$`F_s`$ is proper.

Proof.  By way of contradiction, let $`y_iY`$ be an unbounded sequence such that $`\{\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y_i)\}`$ lies in a compact set $`K`$. We may pass to an unbounded subsequence of $`\{y_i\}`$, which we again denote as $`\{y_i\}`$, such that the sequence $`\varphi (y_i)`$ converges within a fundamental domain for $`\pi _1(M)`$ in $`X`$ to a point $`\theta _0X`$. Since $`K`$ is compact, the set

$$A=\underset{xK}{}E_{(g^{T_0}v_{(x,\theta _0)},\alpha _0)}$$

contains an open neighborhood of $`\theta _0`$ and $`d_X(A,K)T_0`$. Notice that $`A`$ is itself a cone, being the intersection of cones on a nonempty subset of $`X`$.

We now show that $`A`$ contains the image $`\varphi (B(y_i,R_i))`$ of increasingly large balls ($`R_i\mathrm{}`$). However, we observe from the fact that $`A`$ is a cone on an open neighborhood of $`\theta _0`$ in $`X`$ that $`A`$ contains balls $`B(\varphi (y_i),r_i)`$ with $`r_i\mathrm{}`$. By assumption $`f`$, and hence $`\varphi `$, is coarsely Lipschitz:

$$d_X(\varphi x,\varphi y)Kd_Y(x,y)+C$$

for some constants $`C>0`$ and $`K1`$. Therefore $`\varphi ^1(B(\varphi (y_i),r_i))B(y_i,R_i)`$ where $`KR_i+C>r_i`$. In particular $`R_i\mathrm{}`$.

Hence, there exists an unbounded sequence $`R_i`$ such that $`B(y_i,R_i)\varphi ^1(A)`$. Furthermore, since the Ricci curvature is assumed to be bounded from above and the injectivity radius from below, we have that $`\mathrm{Vol}(B(y_i,\mathrm{injrad}))`$ is greater than some constant independent of $`y_i`$ and hence $`_Ye^{sd(y_i,z)}𝑑g(z)>Q`$ for some constant $`Q>0`$. By choice of $`s`$ there is a constant $`C_s`$ depending only on $`s`$ such that $`_Ye^{sd(y,z)}𝑑g(z)<C_s`$ for all $`yY`$.

In polar coordinates we may write,

$`{\displaystyle _Y}e^{sd(y,z)}𝑑g(z)`$ $`={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}e^{st}\mathrm{Vol}(S(y,t))𝑑t`$
$`={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}e^{st}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y,t))𝑑t`$
$`={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}\left(e^{st}\right)\mathrm{Vol}(B(y,t))𝑑t`$
$`=s{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}e^{st}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y,t))𝑑t.`$
Using this we may estimate, using any $`\delta <sh(g)`$,

$`\mu _{y_i}^s(\varphi ^1(A))`$ $`>\mu _{y_i}^s(B(y_i,R_i))`$
$`=1{\displaystyle \frac{_{R_i}^{\mathrm{}}e^{st}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y_i,t))𝑑t}{_0^{\mathrm{}}e^{st}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y_i,t))𝑑t}}`$
$`1{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\delta R_i}_{R_i}^{\mathrm{}}e^{(s\delta )t}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y_i,t))𝑑t}{_0^{\mathrm{}}e^{st}\mathrm{Vol}(B(y_i,t))𝑑t}}`$
$`1e^{\delta R_i}{\displaystyle \frac{C_{s\delta }}{Q}}.`$
Therefore for all sufficiently large $`i`$,

$$\mu _{y_i}^s(\varphi ^1(A))>\frac{3}{3+\sqrt{2}}.$$

The constant $`\frac{3}{3+\sqrt{2}}`$ is the constant $`C`$ from Lemma 6.1 such that $`\frac{1}{C}1=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}`$.

Set $`v_i=g^{T_0+1}v_{(\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y_i),\theta _0)}`$. Recalling that $`AE_{(v_i,\alpha _0)}`$ for all $`i`$, we have that for sufficiently large $`i`$,

$$\varphi _{}\mu _{y_i}^s(E_{(v_i,\alpha _0)})>\frac{3}{3+\sqrt{2}}$$

but $`d_X(\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y_i),E_{(v_i,\alpha _0)})>T_0`$, contradicting the conclusion of Lemma 6.1 in light of Lemma 6.2. $``$

Remarks:

1. In the proof of the above proposition, we used that $`\mathrm{injrad}`$ is bounded from below and $`\mathrm{Ricci}`$ curvature is bounded from above only to show that the volume of balls of any fixed radius are bounded from below.
2. Ideas from coarse topology can be used to remove the coarse lipschitz assumption on $`f`$ in the case that the ends of $`M`$ have angle at infinity bounded away from $`\pi /2`$. However, $`M`$ may have ends containing pieces of flats with wide angle (consider the product of two rank one manifolds each with multiple cusps, or for a complete classification of higher rank ends see \[Ha\]). For such spaces it is possible to construct a proper map $`f:MM`$ such that for a radial sequence $`y_i\mathrm{}`$, $`\varphi `$ maps the bulk of the mass of $`\mu _{y_i}^s`$ into a set (almost) symmetrically arranged about the point $`pX`$ thus keeping $`\stackrel{~}{F}_s(y_i)`$ bounded. This explains the need for a condition on $`f`$ akin to the coarse lipschitz hypothesis.

The inequality in Theorem 1.1 now follows as in the compact case, with $`\mathrm{deg}(f)`$ and $`\mathrm{deg}(F_s)`$ suitably interpreted.

Christopher Connell:
Dept. of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, IL 60680
E-mail: cconnell@math.uic.edu

Benson Farb:
Dept. of Mathematics, University of Chicago
5734 University Ave.
Chicago, Il 60637
E-mail: farb@math.uchicago.edu


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# 1 Sample Selection

## 1 Sample Selection

For this analysis we used a sample of $`9.8\text{ fb}^1`$ of data recorded by the BABAR detector  between January 2000 and the beginning of July 2000, of which $`0.8\text{ fb}^1`$ was recorded 40$`\mathrm{MeV}`$ below the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ resonance (off-resonance data). At PEP-II, $`B`$ mesons are produced in the asymmetric collisions of $`9`$ GeV electrons and $`3.1`$ GeV positrons, and have an average boost along $`z`$ direction of $`\beta \gamma =0.56`$.

$`J/\psi `$ candidates were identified through their decays into $`e^+e^{}`$ and $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$, and $`\psi (2S)`$ candidates were reconstructed in $`e^+e^{}`$, $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$, and $`J/\psi \pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ modes. In the electron modes of $`J/\psi `$ and $`\psi (2S)`$, at least one electron was required to be positively identified. An algorithm for the recovery of Bremsstrahlung photons was used if both electrons were positively identified. Similarly, for the $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ candidates, at least one muon was required to pass particle identification criteria. The charmonium states then were selected in a window around their expected mass, and were combined with $`K_S^0`$ candidates reconstructed through their decays into $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ and $`\pi ^0\pi ^0`$ states to form $`B_{CP}`$ candidates. $`B_{CP}`$ candidates were identified with a pair of nearly uncorrelated kinematic variables: the difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ between the energy of the $`B_{CP}`$ candidate and the beam energy in the center-of-mass frame, and the beam-energy substituted mass $`m_{\mathrm{SE}}`$ . The signal region was defined by $`5.270\mathrm{GeV}/c^2<m_{\mathrm{SE}}<5.290\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ and an approximately three-standard-deviation cut on $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ (typically $`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }E\right|<35\mathrm{MeV}`$). The $`CP`$ sample used in this analysis was composed of 168 candidates: 121 in the $`J/\psi K_S^0`$ ($`K_S^0\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$) channel, 19 in the $`J/\psi K_S^0`$ ($`K_S^0\pi ^0\pi ^0`$) channel and 28 in the $`\psi (2S)K_S^0`$ ($`K_S^0\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$) channel.

## 2 Time Resolution Function

All tracks in the event, excluding those from $`B_{CP}`$, were fit to a common vertex using an iterative procedure, which at each step removes a track with the worst $`\chi ^2`$ greater than 6. Information on the direction of the $`B_{CP}`$, derived from the kinematics of the reconstructed $`B_{CP}`$ and the average position of the interaction point, was also used in the fit. In order to reduce bias, all pairs of tracks that can be reconstructed as long-lived neutral particles ($`V^0`$s), were replaced by the corresponding $`V^0`$ candidates in the fit. Events were rejected if either $`B_{CP}`$ or $`B_{tag}`$ does not converge, or if reconstructed $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ or its uncertainty were large($`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }z\right|>3\mathrm{mm}`$ or $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }z}>400\mu \mathrm{m}`$).

The time resolution function is described accurately by the sum of three Gaussian distributions, which has six independent parameters:

$`(\mathrm{\Delta }t;\widehat{a})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_i}{\sigma _i\sqrt{2\pi }}}\mathrm{exp}\left((\mathrm{\Delta }t\delta _i)^2/2\sigma _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\right).`$ (2)
A fit to the time resolution function in Monte Carlo simulated events indicated that most of the events ($`f_11f_2=70\%`$) were in the core Gaussian, which has a width $`\sigma _10.6\mathrm{ps}`$. The wide Gaussian had a width $`\sigma _21.8\mathrm{ps}`$. Tracks from forward-going charm decays included in the reconstruction of the $`B_{tag}`$ vertex introduced a small bias, $`\delta _10.2\mathrm{ps}`$, for the core Gaussian. The third Gaussian, used to parameterize events at very large values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ due to poorly reconstructed vertices, had a fixed width of 8 ps and a fraction $`f_w1\%`$. In likelihood fits, the widths of the first and second Gaussian were parameterized by event-by-event error $`\sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$ from the vertex fits and two scale factors $`𝒮_1`$ and $`𝒮_2`$ ($`\sigma _1=𝒮_1\times \sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$ and $`\sigma _2=𝒮_2\times \sigma _{\mathrm{\Delta }t}`$). Parameters $`𝒮_2=2.1`$ and $`f_2=0.25`$ were determined from Monte Carlo, bias of the second Gaussian $`\delta _2`$ was fixed at 0 ps, and three remaining parameters $`\widehat{a}=\{𝒮_1,\delta _1,f_w\}`$ were determined from the observed vertex distributions in the hadronic $`B^0`$ decays. The time resolution is dominated by the precision of the $`B_{tag}`$ vertex position, and we found no significant differences in the Monte Carlo simulation of the resolution function parameters for the various fully reconstructed decay modes.

## 3 $`𝑩`$ flavor tagging

Each event with a $`CP`$ candidate was assigned a $`B^0`$ or $`\overline{B}^0`$ tag if the rest of the event (i.e., with the daughter tracks of the $`B_{CP}`$ removed) satisfies the criteria for one of several tagging categories. Three tagging categories relied on the presence of a fast lepton or one or more charged kaons in the event. Two categories, called neural network categories, were based upon the output value of a neural network algorithm applied to events that have not already been assigned to lepton or kaon tagging categories.

The mistag fractions $`w_i`$ were measured directly for each tagging category by studying the probability of flavor mixing in events in which one $`B^0`$ candidate, called the $`B_{rec}`$, was fully reconstructed in a flavor eigenstate mode. Both integrated and time-dependent analyses of the fraction of mixed events are sensitive to the to the mistag fraction. In the time-dependent analysis, the probability density functions of unmixed $`(+)`$ and mixed $`()`$ events were defined similar to Eq. (1)

$$_\pm =\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left|\mathrm{\Delta }t\right|}\left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\pm 𝒟\times \mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Delta }m_d\mathrm{\Delta }t\right](\mathrm{\Delta }t;\widehat{a}).$$
(3)
These functions were used in an maximum maximum likelihood fit to the large samples of fully reconstructed $`B^0`$ decays into hadronic and semileptonic modes to determine mistag fractions $`w_i=\frac{1}{2}(1𝒟_i)`$ for each tagging category $`i`$. We find the tagging efficiency $`\epsilon =(76.7\pm 0.5)\%`$ and the effective tagging efficiency $`Q=\epsilon \left(12w\right)^2=(27.9\pm 0.5)\%`$ (statistical errors only). Out of 168 $`CP`$ candidates, 120 were tagged: 70 as $`B^0`$ and 50 as $`\overline{B}^0`$.

## 4 Extracting $`\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}\mathrm{𝟐}𝜷`$

The value of $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ was determined from an unbinned maximum likelihood fit to the time-dependent distribution of tagged $`B_{CP}`$ decays. The fitting procedure was extensively tested in “toy” Monte Carlo simulations, where effects backgrounds, different resolution function parameterizations, and behavior of the fit on small statistical samples were studied. We also verified the reconstruction and fitting procedure on a large sample of events produced with the full BABAR GEANT3 detector simulation.

The analysis was also validated on the various data control samples where the $`CP`$ asymmetry was expected to be zero. An “apparent $`CP`$ asymmetry” was studied on a sample of $`B^+J/\psi K^+`$ events and events with self-tagged $`B^0J/\psi K^0`$ ($`K^0K^+\pi ^{}`$) decays. We also use the event samples with fully-reconstructed candidates in charged or neutral hadronic modes. In all cases, the apparent $`CP`$ asymmetry was found to be consistent with zero.

We have adopted a blind analysis for the extraction of $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ in order to eliminate possible experimenter’s bias. We used a technique that hides not only the result of the unbinned maximum likelihood fit, but also the visual $`CP`$ asymmetry in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ distribution. The error on the asymmetry was not hidden. With these techniques, numerous systematic studies could be performed while keeping the numerical value of $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ hidden. The analysis procedure for extracting $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ was frozen, and the data sample fixed, prior to unblinding.

Using the maximum-likelihood fit to the full data sample of $`B^0/\overline{B}{}_{}{}^{0}J/\psi K_S^0`$ and $`B^0/\overline{B}{}_{}{}^{0}\psi (2S)K_S^0`$ events, we determined

$$\mathrm{sin}2\beta =0.12\pm 0.37(\mathrm{stat}.)\pm 0.09(\mathrm{syst}.)(\mathrm{preliminary}).$$
(4)
Systematic errors arise from uncertainties in input parameters to the maximum likelihood fit, incomplete knowledge of the time resolution function, uncertainties in the mistag fractions, and possible limitations in the analysis procedure.

## 5 Conclusions and prospects

We have presented the first measurement of the $`CP`$-violating asymmetry parameter $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ in the $`B`$ meson system by BABARCollaboration. Our measurement is consistent with the presently available data, and also agrees within two standard deviations with the value determined by other constraints of the Unitarity Triangle. While the current experimental uncertainty on $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$ is large, the next few years will bring significant improvements in precision. Measurements of $`CP`$-violating asymmetries in other final states are also underway, and will help constrain the Standard Model description of $`CP`$ violation.