All flat three-manifolds appear as cusps of hyperbolic four-manifolds

There are ten diffeomorphism classes of compact, flat 3-manifolds. It has been conjectured that each of these occurs as the boundary of a 4-manifold whose interior admits a complete, hyperbolic structure of finite volume. This paper provides evidence in support of the conjecture. In particular, each diffeomorphism class of compact, flat 3-manifolds is shown to appear as one of the cusps of a complete, finite-volume, hyperbolic Lt-manifold. This is done with a construction that uses special coverings of R-3 by 3-balls. A further consequence of the construction is a finer result about the geometric structures which can be induced on cusps of complete, finite-volume, hyperbolic 4-manifolds. Using Mostow's Rigidity Theorem, one can show that not every flat structure occurs in this way. However, the fact that the flat structures induced on cusps of such 4-manifolds are dense in their respective moduli spaces follows from the construction. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.