Differentiable structures on a union of two open sets
A cornerstone of differential topology is the existence and uniqueness theorem of smooth structures on topological manifolds in low dimensions. More precisely, any topological manifold of dimension 3 or lower admits a unique (up to diffeomorphisms) smooth structure. This result is famously known to be false in dimension 4 and higher: for instance, there are infinitely many inequivalent smooth structures on \(\mathbb{R}^4\), as well as on several higher-dimensional spheres.\N\NOn the other hand, there are various natural instances in geometry where topological spaces are locally Euclidean but do not satisfy the Hausdorff property, hence they are not strictly speaking topological manifolds. Examples in dimension 1 include the line with two origins, i.e. the quotient of two copies of \(\mathbb{R}\) identifying all their points except the two origins, and the letter \(\mathbb{Y}\), i.e. the quotient of two copies of \(\mathbb{R}\) identifying only the points with non-negative coordinates. These and other examples of this kind can be also seen as leaf spaces of foliations on \(\mathbb{R}^2\); indeed, it is known that leaf spaces of foliations on smooth manifolds not only may not admit a smooth structure, but may even fail to be Hausdorff.\N\NThe existence and uniqueness of smooth structures in low dimensions does not apply to non-Hausdorff manifolds, therefore one can have, even in dimension 1, multiple non-diffeomorphic smooth structures [\textit{P. J. Nyikos}, Adv. Math. 93, No. 2, 129--213 (1992; Zbl 0755.57010); \textit{A. Haefliger} and \textit{G. Reeb}, Enseign. Math. (2) 3, 107--125 (1957; Zbl 0079.17101)]. The authors of this article have already classified the smooth structures on the line with two origins, proving that they are infinitely many [\textit{M. Lysynskyi} and \textit{S. Maksymenko}, ``Classification of differentiable structures on the non-Hausdorff line with two origins, Preprint, \url{arXiv:2406.09576}]; in this article, they apply the same techniques to classify the smooth structures on the letter \(\mathbb{Y}\).\N\NThe first main result (Theorem 3.3.4) states that \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-smooth structures (maximal atlases) on \(\mathbb{Y}\) are in 1-1 correspondence with equivalence classes in a certain quotient of the group \(D\) of orientation-preserving \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-diffeomorphisms of \((0,+\infty)\); in particular, they are infinitely many. The idea behind the proof is that atlases on \(\mathbb{Y}\) can be built by providing two charts and their only transition function defines a diffeomorphism of \((0,+\infty)\); then two different atlases turn out to be equivalent if and only if their transition functions belong to the same equivalence class in the quotient of \(D\).\N\NIn Section 4 the authors reformulate their techniques to manifolds \(M = U \cup V\) given by the union of two open sets \(U,V \subseteq M\). Then, under suitable hypotheses, they prove a similar correspondence between \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-smooth structures on \(M\) and equivalence classes in the analogous quotient of the group \(D\) of orientation-preserving \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-diffeomorphisms of \(W = U \cap V\). The previous result on \(M = \mathbb{Y}\) is recovered by taking as \(U\) and \(V\) the images of \(\mathbb{R} \times \{0\}\) and \(\mathbb{R} \times \{1\}\) via the quotient map \(\mathbb{R} \times \{0,1\} \to \mathbb{Y}\).\N\NLast, in Section 5 this result is further extended to arbitrary categories. More precisely, the authors consider a category \(\mathcal{H}\), a subcategory \(\mathcal{C}\), and a suitable generalisation of the notion of atlas with two charts, consisting of diagrams \(U \leftarrow W \rightarrow V\) of objects and morphisms in \(\mathcal{C}\) intertwined by morphisms in \(\mathcal{H}\). The results in Section 4 are recovered by taking the category \(\mathcal{H}\) of topological spaces and homeomorphisms and the subcategory \(\mathcal{C}\) of \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-manifolds and \(\mathcal{C}^r\)-diffeomorphisms.
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