A deleted product criterion for approximability of maps by embeddings (Q1295255)

Let \(K\) be a compact \(n\)-dimensional polyhedron. Denote by \(\widetilde K\) the complement of the diagonal in \(K\times K\). Every embedding \(\varphi\colon K\to\mathbb{R}^m\) gives rise to a map \(\widetilde\varphi \colon\widetilde K\to S^{m-1}\) defined by \(\widetilde\varphi(x,y)= (\varphi(x)-\varphi(y))/\|\varphi(x)-\varphi(y)\|\), and this map is equivariant with respect to the component switching involution of \(\widetilde K\) and the antipodal involution of \(S^{m-1}\). By a classical theorem of \textit{C. Weber} [Comment. Math. Helv. 42, 1-27 (1967; Zbl 0152.22402)], a converse holds under the dimensional restriction \(m\geq 3(n+1)/2\): if there exists an equivariant map \(\Phi\colon \widetilde K\to S^{m-1}\), then there is a PL embedding \(\varphi\colon K\to\mathbb{R}^m\) such that \(\widetilde\varphi\) is equivariantly homotopic to \(\Phi\). In the present paper the authors prove what they call a controlled version of Weber's theorem. They investigate the problem of when a given PL map \(f\colon K\to\mathbb{R}^m\) can be arbitrarily closely approximated by PL embeddings. If \(\widetilde K^f\) denotes the set of all \((x,y)\) in \(K\times K\) such that \(f(x)\neq f(y)\), there exists an equivariant map \(\widetilde f\colon\widetilde K^f\to S^{m-1}\) defined in terms of \(f\) by the same formula as \(\widetilde\varphi\) was defined above in terms of \(\varphi\). The authors show that for an embedding \(\varphi\colon K\to\mathbb{R}^m\) sufficiently close to \(f\), the restriction of \(\widetilde\varphi\) to \(\widetilde K^f\) is equivariantly homotopic to \(\widetilde f\), and they prove that in case \(m\geq 3(n+1)/2\) a converse holds: if there exists an equivariant extension \(\Phi\colon \widetilde K\to S^{m-1}\) of \(\widetilde f\), then \(f\) can be arbitrarily approximated by PL embeddings \(\varphi\) such that \(\widetilde\varphi\) is equivariantly homotopic to \(\Phi\). The dimensional restriction is proved to be sharp.