No label defined (Q4229028)

This paper indirectly addresses the classical problem about the space of self-homeomorphisms of a compact \(n\)-manifold being an absolute neighborhood retract. That conclusion is known to follow if one can establish that the space \(H_\partial (B^n)\) of all homeomorphisms of \(B^n\), the \(n\)-ball, that keep the boundary pointwise fixed is an absolute retract. Using \(Q\) to denote the Hilbert cube, the author turns to the group \(H_\partial (B^n \times Q)\) of homeomorphisms of \(B^n\times Q\) fixing the points of \((\partial B^n)\times Q\), which is known to be an absolute retract [\textit{S. Ferry}, Ann. Math., II. Ser. 106 , 101-119 (1977; Zbl 0375.57014)]; he regards \(H_\partial (B^n)\) as the subset of \(H_\partial(B^n\times Q)\) with elements of the form \(h\times\)identity. Of course, it would suffice to obtain a retraction of \(H_\partial (B^n\times Q)\) to \(H_\partial (B^n)\). Here the author proves that \(H_\partial (B^n)\) contains a dense subset \(D\) such that each \(h\in D\) is a finite composition of homeomorphisms, where each factor \(h_i\) either sends \(B^n\times 0\) to \(B^n\times 0\) or satisfies \(ph_i=p\) \((p:B^n\times Q\to B^n\) denotes the projection map). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0903.00049].