No label defined (Q4338520)

For this reviewer, the proof by Tognoli of the Nash conjecture is one of the most beautiful pieces in the history of real algebraic geometry. This theorem says that each compact \(C^\infty\)-submanifold \(M\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is diffeomorphic to some non-singular algebraic subset of \(\mathbb{R}^p\), for some \(p\geq n\). Moreover, the diffeomorphism can be chosen as close as needed to the inclusion \(M\hookrightarrow \mathbb{R}^p\). This result uses ``approximation techniques'' and the paper under review provides new results in this direction. More precisely, it is introduced the Whitney topology on the set of sections of a coherent sheaf \({\mathcal F}\) of \({\mathcal O}_X\)-modules over the coherent real analytic space \((X,{\mathcal O}_X)\), and it is proved that for any open subset \(U\) of \(X\), the set of sections \(\Gamma(U,{\mathcal F})\) is dense, for the Whitney topology, in the set \(\Gamma (U, {\mathcal F}^\infty)\) of sections of the sheaf \({\mathcal F}^\infty ={\mathcal F} \otimes_{{\mathcal O}_X} {\mathcal E}_X\). As an application, the authors prove the result which motivates the title of the paper: Given analytic functions \(g_i\), \(a_{ij}\) on an open subset \(U\) of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and \(C^\infty\) functions \(f_j\) on \(U\), \(i=1, \dots, m\); \(j=1, \dots, p\), such that \(\sum^p_{j=1} a_{ij} (x)f_j(x) =g_i(x)\), \(i=1,2, \dots, m\), then, in any neighbourhood of \(f= (f_1, \dots, f_p)\) in the Whitney topology of \(C^\infty (U)^p\), there exists \(h= (h_1, \dots, h_p)\) such that each \(h_j\) is analytic on \(U\) and \(\sum^p_{j=1} a_{ij} (x)h_j(x) =g_i(x)\), \(i=1,2, \dots, m\).