Local sections of Serre fibrations with 3-manifold fibers (Q2268637)

Let \(p: E \to B\) be a Serre fibration of separable metric spaces. Assuming that the space \(B\) is locally \(n\)-connected and the fibers are homeomorphic to some fixed \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M^n\), the following question arises: Is \(p\) a locally trivial fibration? For \(n=1\) this is a consequence of the result of \textit{H. Whitney} [Ann. Math. (2) 34, 244--270 (1933; Zbl 0006.37101)] which states that a Serre fibration of compact metric spaces admits a global section provided every fiber is homeomorphic to \([0,1]\). The authors proved an extension of this theorem to the case where the fibers are homeomorphic to some fixed compact 2-manifolds, cf. [Topology Appl. 155, No.~8, 773--782 (2008; Zbl 1157.55013)] In this paper the authors prove the following result: ``Let \(p: E \rightarrow B\) be a Serre fibration of locally 2-connected compacta with all fibers homeomorphic to some fixed compact 3-dimensional manifold. If \(B \) is an ANR, then any section of \(p\) over a closed subset \(A \subset B\) can be extended to a section of \(p\) over some neighborhood of \(A\).'' To prove this theorem the authors construct a section of a Serre fibration by considering the inverse multivalued mapping \(p^{-1}\) and find a compact submapping admitting continuous approximations. Then they take a very close continuous approximation to find again a compact submapping with small diameters of fibers admitting continuous approximations. By continuing this process they get a sequence of compact submappings with diameters of fibers tending to zero. This sequence will converge to the desired single-valued submapping of \(p^{-1}\). This construction was used in [op. cit.], but in this case the authors needed to introduce a new property, called hereditarily coconnected asphericity.