English

On the smoothing theory delooping of disc diffeomorphism and embedding spaces

Geometric Topology 2026-03-06 v4 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

The celebrated Morlet-Burghelea-Lashof-Kirby-Siebenmann smoothing theory theorem states that the group Diff(Dn)\mathrm{Diff}_\partial(D^n) of diffeomorphisms of a disc DnD^n relative to the boundary is equivalent to Ωn+1(PLn/On)\Omega^{n+1}\left(\mathrm{PL}_n/\mathrm{O}_n\right) for any n1n\geq 1 and to Ωn+1(TOPn/On)\Omega^{n+1}\left(\mathrm{TOP}_n/\mathrm{O}_n\right) for n4n\neq 4. We revise smoothing theory results to show that the delooping generalizes to different versions of disc smooth embedding spaces relative to the boundary, namely the usual embeddings, those modulo immersions, and framed embeddings. The latter spaces deloop as Embfr(Dm,Dn)Ωm+1(On\ ⁣ ⁣\PLn/PLn,m)Ωm+1(On\ ⁣ ⁣\TOPn/TOPn,m)\mathrm{Emb}_\partial^{fr}(D^m,D^n)\simeq\Omega^{m+1}\left(\mathrm{O}_n\backslash\!\!\backslash\mathrm{PL}_n/\mathrm{PL}_{n,m}\right)\simeq \Omega^{m+1}\left(\mathrm{O}_n\backslash\!\!\backslash\mathrm{TOP}_n/\mathrm{TOP}_{n,m}\right) for any nm1n\geq m\geq 1 (n4n\neq 4 for the second equivalence), where the left-hand side in the case nm=2n-m=2 or (n,m)=(4,3)(n,m)=(4,3) should be replaced by the union of the path-components of PL\mathrm{PL}-trivial knots (framing being disregarded). Moreover, we show that for n4n\neq 4, the delooping is compatible with the Budney Em+1E_{m+1}-action. We use this delooping to combine the Hatcher Om+1\mathrm{O}_{m+1}-action and the Budney Em+1E_{m+1}-action into a framed little discs operad Em+1Om+1E_{m+1}^{\mathrm{O}_{m+1}}-action on Embfr(Dm,Dn)\mathrm{Emb}_\partial^{fr}(D^m,D^n).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.14699,
  title  = {On the smoothing theory delooping of disc diffeomorphism and embedding spaces},
  author = {Paolo Salvatore and Victor Turchin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.14699},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Section 7 was added to improve the clarity of the exposition