The Gromov-Lawson-Chernysh surgery theorem (Q2024082)

The abstract of this paper says ``This is an expository article without any claim of originality.'' Nevertheless, the paper is a very useful contribution to the literature on positive scalar curvature, most of which depends on the ``surgery theorem'' of \textit{M. Gromov} and \textit{H. B. Lawson jun.} [Ann. Math. (2) 111, 423--434 (1980; Zbl 0463.53025)] and of \textit{R. Schoen} and \textit{S.-T. Yau} [Manuscr. Math. 28, 159--183 (1979; Zbl 0423.53032)], with variations due to \textit{V. Chernysh} [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 134, No. 9, 2771--2777 (2006; Zbl 1092.58005)] and others. The problem that the authors correct is that all of the existing literature on the surgery theorem involves a certain amount of ``hand waving'' and compression, making it very hard to read and to check. This paper redoes the proof in full detail, explaining all the necessary estimates, and correcting a number of minor mistakes.