arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Francois Laudenbach.
Following the overall strategy of the paper ``Convex hypersurfaces in contact topology" by Ko Honda and Yang Huang on contact convexity in high dimensions, we present a simplified proof of their main result.
In this article we lay out the details of Fukaya's $A_\infty$-structure of the Morse complexe of a manifold possibly with boundary. We show that this $A_\infty$-structure is homotopically independent of the made choices. We emphasize the transversality arguments that make some fiber products smooth.
The first part of this article intends to present the role played by Thom in diffusing Smale's ideas about immersion theory, at a time (1957) where some famous mathematicians were doubtful about them: it is clearly impossible to make the sphere inside out! Around a decade later, M. Gromov transformed Smale's idea in what is now known as the h-principle. Here, the h stands for homotopy.Shortly after the astonishing discovery by Smale, Thom gave a conference in Lille (1959) announcing a theorem which would deserve to be named a homological h-principle. The aim of our second part is to comment about this theorem which was completely ignored by the topologists in Paris, but not in Leningrad. We explain Thom's statement and answer the question whether it is true. The first idea is combinatorial. A beautiful subdivision of the standard simplex emerges from Thom's article. We connect it with the jiggling technique introduced by W. Thurston in his seminal work on foliations.
For some geometries including symplectic and contact structures on an n-dimensional manifold, we introduce a two-step approach to Gromov's h-principle. From formal geometric data, the first step builds a transversely geometric Haefliger structure of codimension n. This step works on all manifolds, even closed. The second step, which works only on open manifolds and for all geometries, regularizes the intermediate Haefliger structure and produces a genuine geometric structure. Both steps admit relative parametric versions. The proofs borrow ideas from W. Thurston, like jiggling and inflation. Actually, we are using a more primitive jiggling due to R. Thom.
Given a Morse function f on a closed manifold M with distinct critical values, and given a field F, there is a canonical complex, called the Morse-Barannikov complex, which is equivalent to any Morse complex associated with f and whose form is simple. In particular, the homology of M with coefficients in F is immediately readable on this complex. The bifurcation theory of this complex in a generic one-parameter family of functions will be investigated. Applications to the boundary manifolds will be given.
Heegaard splittings and Heegaard diagrams of a closed 3-manifold M are translated into the language of Morse functions with Morse-Smale pseudo-gradients defined on M. We make use in a very simple setting of techniques which Jean Cerf developed for solving a famous pseudo-isotopy problem. In passing, we show how to cancel the supernumerary local extrema in a generic path of functions when dim M>2. The main tool that we introduce is an elementary swallow tail lemma which could be useful elsewhere.
In this note, we give a proof of the famous theorem of M. Morse dealing with the cancellation of a pair of non-degenerate critical points of a smooth function. Our proof consists of a reduction to the one-dimensional case where the question becomes easy to answer.
We consider singular foliations of codimension one on 3-manifolds, in the sense defined by A. Haefliger as being Gamma_1-structures. We prove that under the obvious linear embedding condition, they are Gamma_1-homotopic to a regular foliation carried by an open book or a twisted open book. The latter concept is introduced for this aim. Our result holds true in every regularity C^r, r at least 1. In particular, in dimension 3, this gives a very simple proof of Thurston's 1976 regularization theorem without using Mather's homology equivalence.
This note deals with arbitrary Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms in dimension 3 and extends ideas from \cite{GrLaPo}, \cite{GrLaPo1}, where gradient-like case was considered. We introduce a kind of Morse-Lyapunov function, called dynamically ordered, which fits well dynamics of diffeomorphism. The paper is devoted to finding conditions to the existence of such an energy function, that is, a function whose set of critical points coincides with the non-wandering set of the considered diffeomorphism. We show that the necessary and sufficient conditions to the existence of a dynamically ordered energy function reduces to the type of embedding of one-dimensional attractors and repellers of a given Morse-Smale diffeomorphism on a closed 3-manifold.
Given a compact smooth manifold $M$ with non-empty boundary and a Morse function, a pseudo-gradient Morse-Smale vector field adapted to the boundary allows one to build a Morse complex whose homology is isomorphic to the (absolute or relative to the boundary) homology of $M$ with integer coefficients. Our approach simplifies other methods which have been discussed in more specific geometric settings.
We give a finite dimensional approach to the Chas-Sullivan product on the free loop space of a manifold, orientable or not.
The paper is devoted to finding conditions to the existence of a self-indexing energy function for Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on a 3-manifold. These conditions involve how the stable and unstable manifolds of saddle points are embedded in the ambient manifold. We also show that the existence of a self-indexing energy function is equivalent to the existence of a Heegaard splitting of a special type with respect to the considered diffeomorphism.
For $Γ_1$-structures on 3-manifolds, we give a very simple proof of Thurston's regularization theorem, first proved in \cite{thurston}, without using Mather's homology equivalence. Moreover, in the co-orientable case, the resulting foliation can be chosen of a precise kind, namely an "open book foliation modified by suspension." There is also a model in the non co-orientable case.
According to Pixton, there are Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms of the 3-sphere which have no energy function, that is a Lyapunov function whose critical points are all periodic points of the diffeomorphism. We introduce the concept of quasi-energy function for a Morse-Smale diffeomorphism as a Lyapunov function with the least number of critical points and construct a quasi-energy function for any diffeomorphism from some class of Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on the 3-sphere.
We exhibit a pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of a surface S which acts trivially on the first homology group of S and whose flux is non zero
In contrast with what happens for Legendrian embeddings, there always exist positive loops of Legendrian immersions.
This article has been withdrawn due to a mistake which is explained in version 2.