Construction of smooth sphere maps with given degree and a generalization of Morse index formula for smooth vector fields (Q2342880)

Let \(M\) be a compact smooth manifold with or without boundary \(\partial M\), and let \(V(x)\) be a continuous vector field on \(M\) having the zeros situated in \(M\setminus \partial M\). Let \(\partial _{-} M\) be the component of \(\partial M\) where \(V(x)\) points inward, and let \(\partial _{-} V(x)\) be the tangential component of \(V(x)\) to \(\partial M\) when restricted to \(\partial _{-} M\). The main result of the paper is contained in Theorem 4.1 and it represents a generalization of the Morse index formula: Denote by \(\text{Ind}(V)\) the index sum of isolated zeros of \(V(x)\) on \(M\) and by \(\text{Ind}(\partial _{-} V)\) the index sum of zeros of \(\partial _{-} V(x)\) on \(\partial _{-} M\). If the vector field \(\partial _{-} V(x)\) has only isolated zeros in \(\partial _{-} M\), then \(\text{Ind}(V)+\text{Ind}(\partial _{-} V)=\chi (M)\). The proof is based on a fundamental result on index of zero of a vector field (Lemma 2.1). Another application of this result consists in an effective construction of a representative map for the homotopy class of continuous maps \(f : S^n \rightarrow S^n\).