Minimizing singularities of generic plane disks with immersed boundaries (Q2368544)

The paper desribes the structure of singularities of stable mappings of the two-dimensional unit disk \(D\) into the real plane having a prescribed behaviour on the unit circle \(S = bD\). Namely, given an immersion \(F: S \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2\) and a normal vector field \(v\) along \(f(S)\) the authors consider stable mappings \(F: D \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2\) extending \(f\) and such that \(dF(n)=v\), where \(n\) is the outward normal vector field on \(S\). The only singularities of such an extension \(F\) being folds and cusps, let \(N(F)\) be the number of components of the singular set and \(C(F)\) the number of cusps of \(F\). The main result gives a lower estimate for \(N(F)\) in terms of \(C(F)\) and the Whitney index (tangential degree) \(W(f)\) of the given immersion \(f\). More precisely, it is shown that \(C(F) = W(F) + 1 \pmod2\) and, for each natural \(m = W(F) + 1 (\text{mod}\, 2)\), there exists a stable extension \(F\) with \(C(F) = m\) such that \(N(F)\) has the minimal possible value explicitly given in terms of \(W(F)\) and \(m\). Thus the estimates obtained in the paper are sharp and provide a fairly complete description of the singularities of stable extensions of the given immersion \(f\). The results presented in the paper explicate and extend a number of preceding results on the structure of singularities of stable mappings of two-dimensional manifolds obtained by \textit{Ya. M. Eliashberg} [Math. USSR, Izv. 4 (1970), 1119--1134 (1971; Zbl 0226.57012)], \textit{J. R. Quine} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 236, 307--314 (1978; Zbl 0379.57006)] and \textit{T. Fukuda} with \textit{G. Ishikawa} [Tokyo J. Math. 10, 375--384 (1987; Zbl 0652.58012)].