Elimination of extremal index zeroes from generic paths of closed 1-forms (Q484343)

This paper deals with the question of elimination of extremal index zeroes from generic paths of closed 1-forms. Let \(\alpha\) be a Morse closed \(1\)-form of a smooth \(n\)-dimensional manifold \(M\). The zeroes of \(\alpha\) of index 0 or \(n\) are called centers. It is known that every non-vanishing de Rham cohomology class \(u\) contains a Morse representative without centers. The main result of this paper is the one-parameter analogue of the last statement: every generic path \((\alpha_t)_{t\in[0,1]}\) of closed 1-forms in a fixed class \(u\neq0\) such that \(\alpha_0\), \(\alpha_1\) have no centers, can be modified relatively to its extremities to another such path \((\beta_t)_{t\in[0,1]}\) having no center at all.