Gradient versus proper gradient homotopies (Q2214739)

In this paper the authors establish the following description: If \(\mathcal{V}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^n]\) denotes the set of gradient homotopy classes of gradient maps \(\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n\) having Brouwer degree \(k\), then \textbf{Theorem}. \(\mathcal{V}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^n]\) is a singleton, for each integer \(k\) and \(n\geq 2.\) Moreover, if \(\mathcal{P}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^2]\) denotes the set of proper gradient homotopy classes of proper gradient maps \(\mathbb{R}^2\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2\) having Brouwer degree \(k\), then: \medskip \textbf{Theorem}. \(\mathcal{P}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^2]\) is empty for \(k>1\), a singleton for \(k=0\) and has at most two elements for \(k=1.\) These two results prove that, essentially, gradient and proper gradient homotopy classifications are different. The authors conjecture that \(\mathcal{P}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^2]\) is a singleton for \(k<0.\) They also leave as an open problem a complete description of \(\mathcal{P}_k^{\nabla }[\mathbb{R}^n]\) (\(n>2\)).