On the Homology of the Space of Curves Immersed in The Sphere with Curvature Constrained to a Prescribed Interval

Abstract

While the topology of the space of all smooth immersed curves on the $2$-sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ that start and end at given points in given directions is well known, it is an open problem to understand the homotopy type of its subspaces consisting of the curves whose geodesic curvatures are constrained to a prescribed proper open interval. In this article we prove that, under certain circumstances for endpoints and end directions, these subspaces are not homotopically equivalent to the whole space. Moreover, we give an explicit construction of exotic generators for some homotopy and cohomology groups. It turns out that the dimensions of these generators depend on endpoints and end directions. A version of the h-principle is used to prove these results.