A Bass-Heller-Swan formula for pseudoisotopies (Q711654)

\textit{C. B. Hughes} and the second author [``Control and relaxation over the circle'', Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 691, 96 p. (2000; Zbl 0956.19002)] have once established a Bass-Heller-Swan formula for Whitehead spaces, which as the present authors note yields a Bass-Heller-Swan splitting for the stable pseudoisotopy space. A related splitting in \(A\)-theory was given by \textit{T. Hüntemann} et al. [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 160, No. 1, 21--52 (2001; Zbl 0982.19001)]. The authors announce a series of papers that will provide a splitting of the smooth pseudoisotopy space. As a first step, in the present paper they use geometric methods to prove analogues of the Bass-Heller-Swan splitting for stable and unstable pseudoisotopy groups, that is, the groups of path components of the smooth pseudoisotopy spaces. In the authors' words, these ``should be thought of as a version of the Bass-Heller-Swan splitting in \(Wh_2\)''.