The homotopy classification of proper Fredholm maps of index one (Q2156725)

Given a simply connected manifold \(M\) modeled by to separable Hilbert space \(H,\) a smooth proper Fredholm map \(f \colon M \rightarrow H\) of index one is said to be spin if the homomorphism induced in the second homotopy group by the differential \(Df\colon M \rightarrow \Phi_1(H)\) is trivial. The authors associate a \(Z_2\) valued invariant \(\tau(f)\) to any spin map \(f\) by counting mod-2 the number of connected components \(S\) of the inverse image of a regular value such that \(Df_{|S}\) extends in a nonsingular way to a disk \(D\) with \(\partial D=S.\) Using the above invariant they prove the following result: i) Two proper non spin maps \( f, g\,\colon M \rightarrow H\) are properly homotopic if and only if \(Df\) and \(Dg\) are homotopic. ii) Two spin maps \( f, g \,\colon M \rightarrow H\) are properly homotopic if and only if \(Df\) and \(Dg\) are homotopic and \(\tau(f)= \tau(g).\) As a consequence they obtain a complete classification of the set of proper homotopy classes of Fredholm maps of index \(1\) from a simply connected manifold to its model space in terms of the homotopy classes of their differentials.