Immersions associated with holomorphic germs (Q894372)

The regular homotopy classes \(\text{Imm}(S^{3},S^{5})\) of immersions \( f:S^{3}\rightarrow S^{5}\) may be identified with the integers \(\mathbb{Z}\) by the Smale invariant \(\Omega (f)\). In turn, any holomorphic map-germ \( \Phi :(\mathbb{C}^{2},0)\rightarrow (\mathbb{C}^{3},0),\) singular only at the origin (i.e., \(\{z:\text{rank}(d\Phi _{z})<2\}\subset \{0\}\)) provides an immersion \(f:S^{3}\rightarrow S^{5}\) defined by \(f:=\Phi |_{\Phi ^{-1}(S_{\varepsilon }^{5})},\) \(\varepsilon \) small. The main result of the paper is a characterization of the elements of \(\text{Imm}(S^{3},S^{5})\) induced by holomorphic map-germs \(\Phi :\) {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[(a)] \(\text{Imm}_{\mathrm{hol}}(S^{3},S^{5})\) is identified via the sign-refined Smale invariant \(\Omega (f)\) by the set of non-positive integers. \item [(b)] If the immersion \(f\) is induced by a holomorphic germ \(\Phi ,\) then \( \Omega (f)=-C(\Phi ),\) where \(C(\Phi )\) is the number of cross cap points (complex Whitney umbrellas, or pinch points) of a generic perturbation of \( \Phi\). \(C(\Phi )\) can be calculated in an algebraic way, as the codimension of the ideal generated by the determinants of the \(2\times 2\)-minors of the Jacobian matrix of \(\Phi\). \end{itemize}}