Whitney immersion theorem

In differential topology, the Whitney immersion theorem (named after Hassler Whitney) states that for , any smooth -dimensional manifold (required also to be Hausdorff and second-countable) has a one-to-one immersion in Euclidean -space, and a (not necessarily one-to-one) immersion in -space. Similarly, every smooth -dimensional manifold can be immersed in the -dimensional sphere (this removes the constraint).

The weak version, for , is due to transversality (general position, dimension counting): two m-dimensional manifolds in intersect generically in a 0-dimensional space.

Further results

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William S. Massey (Massey 1960) went on to prove that every n-dimensional manifold is cobordant to a manifold that immerses in   where   is the number of 1's that appear in the binary expansion of  . In the same paper, Massey proved that for every n there is manifold (which happens to be a product of real projective spaces) that does not immerse in  .

The conjecture that every n-manifold immerses in   became known as the immersion conjecture. This conjecture was eventually solved in the affirmative by Ralph Cohen (1985).

See also

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References

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  • Cohen, Ralph L. (1985). "The immersion conjecture for differentiable manifolds". Annals of Mathematics. 122 (2): 237–328. doi:10.2307/1971304. JSTOR 1971304. MR 0808220.
  • Massey, William S. (1960). "On the Stiefel-Whitney classes of a manifold". American Journal of Mathematics. 82 (1): 92–102. doi:10.2307/2372878. JSTOR 2372878. MR 0111053.
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