The Grushin hemisphere as a Ricci limit space with curvature $\ge 1$

Abstract

The Grushin sphere is an almost-Riemannian manifold that degenerates along its equator. We construct a sequence of Riemannian metrics on a sphere $S^{m+n}$ with $Ric\ge 1$ such that its Gromov-Hausdorff limit is the $n$-dimensional Grushin hemisphere.