Tits alternative for closed real analytic 4-manifolds of nonpositive curvature

We study subgroups of fundamental groups of real analytic closed 4-manifolds with nonpositive sectional curvature. In particular, we are interested in the following question: if a subgroup of the fundamental group is not virtually free abelian, does it contain a free group of rank two ? The technique involves the theory of general metric spaces of nonpositive curvature.Comment: 26 page

A Rigidity Property of Some Negatively Curved Solvable Lie Groups

We show that for some negatively curved solvable Lie groups, all self quasiisometries are almost isometries. We prove this by showing that all self quasisymmetric maps of the ideal boundary (of the solvable Lie groups) are bilipschitz with respect to the visual metric. We also define parabolic visual metrics on the ideal boundary of Gromov hyperbolic spaces and relate them to visual metrics