On the total curvatures of a tame function (Q839955): Difference between revisions

Let \(f: \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}\) be a \(C^2\)-function, definable in an o-minimal extension of \(\mathbb{R}\). Suppose that \(t \in \mathbb{R}\) is a regular value of \(f\). Then the preimage \(M_t := f^{-1}(t)\) is an oriented \(n-1\)-dimensional manifold; let \(K(t)\) be the total curvature of \(M_t\) and let \(|K|(t)\) be its total absolute curvature. These two functions of \(t\) are defined using integrals, so, a priori, they are not definable. The present article shows that they nevertheless share some properties of definable functions. Namely, they have only finitely many discontinuities (Theorem in the introduction), and if \(c\) is such a discontinuity, then the limits \(\lim_{t\to c-}g(t)\), \(\lim_{t\to c+}g(t)\) exist for \(g(t) = K(t), |K|(t)\) (Corollary~6.1). In Section~7, similar results are obtained for the total curvature of the subset \(\mathcal{I}_t(\lambda) \subset M_t\) of ``points of Morse index \(\lambda\)'' (see Definition~3.4).