Local inversion theorems without assuming continuous differentiability (Q5916343)

It is a rather classical result that if \(f\) is a one-to-one mapping from an open subset \(U\) of \(\mathbb{R}^ n\) such that \(f\) is differentiable at \(a\in U\), with \(\hbox{det}(f'(a))\neq 0\), and if \(f^{-1}\) is continuous at \(b=f(a)\) interior to \(f(U)\), then \(f^{-1}\) is differentiable at \(b\) and \((f^{-1})'(b)=(f'(a))^{-1}\). Thus if \(f\) is a differentiable local homeomorphism from \(U\) into \(\mathbb{R}^ n\) such that \(\hbox{det}(f')\) does not vanish in \(U\), then \(f\) is a local diffeomorphism. The authors prove that the condition ``\(f\) is differentiable in \(U\) and \(\hbox{det}(f')\) does not vanish in \(U\)'' is already sufficient for \(f\) to be a local homeomorphism and further a local diffeomorphism. Additionally they obtain that \(\hbox{det}(f')\) has a constant sign on each connected component of \(U\). The proof relies on the theory of topological degree and on results on the set over which a discrete open mapping fails to be a local homeomorphism. As long as it is possible the authors state their lemmas in terms of functions belonging to an admissible class \(M(D)\), where \(D\) is open in a Banach space \(E\). Thus they obtain easily that if \(f\) is differentiable on \(D\) with \(f'(x)\in \hbox{Isom}(E,E)\cap M(E)\) for all \(x\in D\), then \(f\) is open and discrete. Although they conjecture that under these conditions \(f\) is a local homeomorphism, they need the finite-dimensionality assumption to show that \(f\) meets the more restrictive conditions that provide the results.