Homotopy equivalence for proper holomorphic mappings (Q890127)

The paper considers proper holomorphic mappings between balls in possibly different dimensional complex Euclidean spaces and introduces the notion of \textit{homotopy equivalence} for such maps. The one-dimensional homotopy equivalence is easy to describe. One of the main results of the paper under review is a higher-dimensional analogue for homotopy equivalence; it is given in terms of Whitney sequences. The authors provide examples showing that the degree of a rational proper mapping between balls (in positive codimension) is not a homotopy invariant. Moreover, the authors show that, in domains of dimension at least two, the set of homotopy classes of rational proper maps from a ball to a higher-dimensional ball is finite. On the other hand, it is proved that an arbitrary homotopy of rational maps whose endpoints are spherically inequivalent must contain uncountably many spherically inequivalent maps.