On the geometry of asymptotically flat manifolds

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the geometry of asymptotically flat manifolds with controlled holonomy. We show that any end of such manifold admits a torus fibration over an ALE end. In addition, we prove a Hitchin-Thorpe inequality for oriented Ricci-flat $4$-manifolds with curvature decay and controlled holonomy. As an application, we show that any complete asymptotically flat Ricci-flat metric on a $4$-manifold which is homeomorphic to $\mathbb R^4$ must be isometric to the Euclidean or the Taub-NUT metric, provided that the tangent cone at infinity is not $\mathbb R \times \mathbb R_+$.