Parallel tangency for immersions into Euclidean spaces (Q694665)

Let \(M\) and \(N\) be two closed, oriented, smoothly immersed manifolds of codimension 2 in \(\mathbb R^{2n}\) (Euclidean \(2n\)-dimensional space). The paper studies the following enumeration problem: find the number \(P(M,N)\) of pairs \((x,y)\in M\times N\) of points so that \(M_x\) is parallel to \(N_y\), where \(M_x\subset \mathbb R^{2n}\) is the tangent space to \(M\) at \(x\). The number \(P(M,N)\) is called the parallel tangency of the two immersions \(M,N\to \mathbb R^{2n}\). In Theorem 1.1 a lower bound is given for the number \(P(M,N)\) in terms of the Euler characteristics \(\chi (M), \chi (N)\) and the degrees of immersions \(\kappa (M), \kappa (N)\) which are integers that are regular homotopy invariants. The degree of the immersion \(M\to \mathbb R^{2n}\) is defined in terms of the Kronecker pairing \(<.,.>\) of the orientation class \([M]\in H_{2(n-1)}(M)\) on \(M\) and the Euler class \(d(M)\in H^2(M)\) of the normal bundle of the immersion \(M\to \mathbb R^{2n}\), i.e. \(\chi(M) = <d(M)^{n-1},[M]>. \) It is also pointed out that the number \(P(M,N)\) makes sense only if the codimension is 2. Here is the final formula: \( P(M,N)\geq|\chi(M) \chi(N)-\kappa(M) \kappa(N)|\) if \(n\) is even and \( P(M,N)\geq \max\{|\chi(M) \chi(N)|,|\kappa(M) \kappa(N)|\}\) if \(n\) is odd.