Higher dimensional links are singular slice (Q5947144)

An \(n\)-dimensional link is a smooth embedding of a disjoint union of finitely many copies of the \(n\)-sphere into the \((n+2)\)-sphere. It is defined to be slice if it extends to a smooth embedding of disjoint copies of the \((n+1)\)-disk, and singularly slice if the maps are not required to be embeddings but still different components are mapped with disjoint images. In the classical dimension \(n=1\), linking numbers and Milnor's \(\mu\)-invariants constitute obstructions to singular sliceness. In this paper, by meticulous arguments using a great deal of geometric and algebraic topology, it is proved that all links of dimension at least 2 are singular slice. Combining this with a not yet published result by P. Teichner shows that all these links are homotopically trivial in the sense of a motion keeping different components disjoint.