We show that the class of CAT(0) spaces is closed under suitable conformal changes. In particular, any CAT(0) space admits a large variety of non-trivial deformations.
We prove that a minimal disc in a CAT(0) space is a local embedding away from a finite set of branch points. On the way we establish several basic properties of minimal surfaces: monotonicity of area densities, density bounds, limit theorems and the
existence of tangent maps. As an application, we prove Fary-Milnors theorem in the CAT(0) setting.
We construct short retractions of a CAT(1) space to its small convex subsets. This construction provides an alternative geometric description of an analytic tool introduced by Wilfrid Kendall. Our construction uses a tractrix flow which can be defi
ned as a gradient flow for a family of functions of certain type. In an appendix we prove a general existence result for gradient flows of time-dependent locally Lipschitz semiconcave functions, which is of independent interest.
We examine volume pinching problems of CAT(1) spaces. We characterize a class of compact geodesically complete CAT(1) spaces of small specific volume. We prove a sphere theorem for compact CAT(1) homology manifolds of small volume. We also formulate
a criterion of manifold recognition for homology manifolds on volume growths under an upper curvature bound.
We show that any filtering family of closed convex subsets of a finite-dimensional CAT(0) space $X$ has a non-empty intersection in the visual bordification $ bar{X} = X cup partial X$. Using this fact, several results known for proper CAT(0) spaces
may be extended to finite-dimensional spaces, including the existence of canonical fixed points at infinity for parabolic isometries, algebraic and geometric restrictions on amenable group actions, and geometric superrigidity for non-elementary actions of irreducible uniform lattices in products of locally compact groups.
Given a fixed closed manifold M, we exhibit an explicit formula for the distance function of the canonical L^2 Riemannian metric on the manifold of all smooth Riemannian metrics on M. Additionally, we examine the (metric) completion of the manifold o
f metrics with respect to the L^2 metric and show that there exists a unique minimal path between any two points. This path is also given explicitly. As an application of these formulas, we show that the metric completion of the manifold of metrics is a CAT(0) space.