English

Approximating continuous maps by isometries

Differential Geometry 2016-09-08 v2

Abstract

The Nash-Kuiper Theorem states that the collection of C1C^1-isometric embeddings from a Riemannian manifold MnM^n into EN\mathbb{E}^N is C0C^0-dense within the collection of all smooth 1-Lipschitz embeddings provided that n<Nn < N. This result is now known to be a consequence of Gromov's more general hh-principle. There have been some recent extensions of the Nash-Kuiper Theorem to Euclidean polyhedra, which in some sense provide a very specialized discretization of the hh-principle. In this paper we will discuss these recent results and provide generalizations to the setting of isometric embeddings of spaces endowed with indefinite metrics into Minkowski space. The new observation is that, when dealing with Minkowski space, the assumption "1-Lipschitz" can be removed. Thus, we obtain results about isometric embeddings that are C0C^0-dense within the collection of {\it all} continuous maps.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.00435,
  title  = {Approximating continuous maps by isometries},
  author = {Barry Minemyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.00435},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

11 pages, 1 figure, comments and suggestions welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:25:02.936Z