On handle theory for Morse-Bott critical manifolds (Q2273271)

This paper studies flows induced by Morse-Bott functions on \(n\)-dimensional manifolds. The main results of the paper present some conditions for an abstract Morse-Bott graph to be realized as the Morse-Bott graph associated to a flow induced by a Morse-Bott function. A necessary condition for this realization is that the Morse-Bott graph must satisfy the generalized Morse-Bott inequalities for isolating blocks (Corollary 5.1). In addition, this condition turns out to be sufficient in the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional cases to realize an abstract Morse-Bott semigraph with only one vertex as the Morse-Bott semigraph of a Morse-Bott flow on an isolating block (Theorem 6.1 and Theorem 6.3) and to realize an abstract Morse-Bott graph by a Morse-Bott flow on a closed 3-dimensional manifold (Corollary 6.1). Theorem 6.2 establishes some necessary and sufficient conditions for an abstract Morse-Bott graph to be associated to a Morse-Bott flow defined on a closed 2-dimensional manifold. Notice that the 2-manifold is completely determined by the data on the Morse-Bott graph. The authors point out that in contrast with the 2-dimensional case, a realizable 3-abstract Morse-Bott graph may be associated to flows in infinitely many 3-manifolds. The last section of the paper deals with the \(n\)-dimensional case with \(n>3\).