Topologically nontrivial counterexamples to Sard's theorem I

Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - 15:00 to 15:50
Thackeray 427

Abstract or Additional Information

My talk is based on my recent joint work with Pawel Goldstein and Pekka Pankka. We prove the following dichotomy:
if $n=2,3$ and $f\in C^1(S^{n+1},S^n)$ is not homotopic to a constant map,
then there is an open set $\Omega\subset S^{n+1}$ such that ${\rm rank}\, Df=n$ on $\Omega$ and $f(\Omega)$ is dense in $S^n$, while
for any $n\geq 4$, there is a map $f\in C^1(S^{n+1},S^n)$ that is not homotopic to a constant map and such that
${\rm rank} Df<n$ everywhere. The proofs are based on a mixture of methods: generalized Hopf invariant, Hodge decomposition, and 
the Freudenthal suspension theorem. In the first talk I will discuss the case $n=2,3$ and in the second one the case $n\geq 4$.