English

Topologically nontrivial counterexamples to Sard's theorem

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2018-05-31 v2 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

We prove the following dichotomy: if n=2,3n=2,3 and fC1(Sn+1,Sn)f\in C^1(\mathbb{S}^{n+1},\mathbb{S}^n) is not homotopic to a constant map, then there is an open set ΩSn+1\Omega\subset\mathbb{S}^{n+1} such that rankdf=n\mathrm{rank}\, df=n on Ω\Omega and f(Ω)f(\Omega) is dense in Sn\mathbb{S}^n, while for any n4n\geq 4, there is a map fC1(Sn+1,Sn)f\in C^1(\mathbb{S}^{n+1},\mathbb{S}^n) that is not homotopic to a constant map and such that rankdf<n\mathrm{rank}\, df<n everywhere. The result in the case n4n\geq 4 answers a question of Larry Guth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.07658,
  title  = {Topologically nontrivial counterexamples to Sard's theorem},
  author = {Paweł Goldstein and Piotr Hajłasz and Pekka Pankka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.07658},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:30:01.535Z