Ricci Curvature and Volume Convergence

The purpose of this paper is to give a new (integral) estimate of distances and angles on manifolds with a given lower Ricci curvature bound. This will provide us with an integral version of the Toponogov comparison triangle theorem for Ricci curvature and extreme triangles (see the earlier works [Cl] and [C2] for an analog of this when the manifold has positive Ricci curvature). Using this, we prove the Anderson-Cheeger conjecture saying that the volume is a continuous function on the space of all closed n-manifolds with Ricci curvature greater or equal to -(n - 1) equipped with the GromovHausdorff metric. We also prove Gromov's conjecture (for n 57 3) saying that an almost nonnegatively Ricci curved n-manifold with first Betti number equal to n is a torus. Further, we prove a conjecture of Anderson-Cheeger saying that an open n-manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature whose tangent cone at infinity is in is itself in. Finally we prove a conjecture of Fukaya-Yamaguchi. We will now describe these results in more detail. Let dGH denote the Gromov-Hausdorff distance [GLP]. First we have the following result which was conjectured by Anderson-Cheeger.