Differentiable approximation of continuous semialgebraic maps (Q2315947)

This paper concerns the problem of approximating a uniformly continuous semialgebraic map \(f: S \to T\) from a compact semialgebraic set \(S\) to an arbitrary semialgebraic set \(T\) by a semialgebraic map \(g: S \to T\) that is differentiable of class \(C^\nu\), where \(\nu\) is a positive integer or \(\infty\). It is known that if \(T\) is an \(C^\nu\) semialgebraic manifold, then arbitrarily good (in the \(C^\nu\)-norm) \(C^\nu\) semialgebraic approximations exist. The authors show that for \emph{any semialgebraic \(T\)}, arbitrarily good \(\nu = 1\) approximations are possible. For \(\nu \geq 2\), they obtain density results when: (1) \(T\) is compact and locally \(C^\nu\) semialgebraically equivalent to a polyhedron, or (2) \(T\) is an open semialgebraic subset of a Nash set. The paper includes a useful review of approximation results in semialgebraic geometry, including discussion of key references.