Properly convex bending of hyperbolic manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we show that bending a finite volume hyperbolic $d$-manifold $M$ along a totally geodesic hypersurface $\Sigma$ results in a properly convex projective structure on $M$ with finite volume. We also discuss various geometric properties of bent manifolds and algebraic properties of their fundamental groups. We then use this result to show in each dimension $d\geq 3$ there are examples finite volume, but non-compact, properly convex $d$-manifolds. Furthermore, we show that the examples can be chosen to be either strictly convex or non-strictly convex.