How Riemannian Manifolds Converge: A Survey

Abstract: This is an intuitive survey of extrinsic and intrinsic notions of convergence of manifolds complete with pictures of key examples and a discussion of the properties associated with each notion. We begin with a description of three extrinsic notions which have been applied to study sequences of submanifolds in Euclidean space: Hausdorff convergence of sets, flat convergence of integral currents, and weak convergence of varifolds. We next describe a variety of intrinsic notions of convergence which have been applied to study sequences of compact Riemannian manifolds: Gromov-Hausdorff convergence of metric spaces, convergence of metric measure spaces, Instrinsic Flat convergence of integral current spaces, and ultralimits of metric spaces. We close with a speculative section addressing possible notions of intrinsic varifold convergence, convergence of Lorentzian manifolds and area convergence.