Homotopical stability of isolated critical points of continuous functionals (Q1611759)

The author presents other proofs of results obtained by \textit{A. Ioffe} and \textit{E. Schwartzman} [J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 75, 125-153 (1996; Zbl 0852.58018) and Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 125, 2725-2732 (1997; Zbl 0885.58012)]. In particular the potential well theorem establishing the size of the potential well associated with a local minimum of a continuous functional defined on a locally connected complete metric space is established as well as the homotopical stability of an isolated minimum and bifurcation results. The proofs do not rely on the notion of descent structure introduced by Ioffe and Schwartzman but rely on a deformation lemma and a change of metric principle of the nonsmooth critical point theory.