Sections of Serre fibrations with 2-manifold fibers (Q924266)

A Serre fibration is a map \(p:E\to B\) that satisfies the homotopy lifting property with respect to CW-complexes. The authors note that in 1933, H. Whitney proved that in case \(E\), \(B\) are compact and metrizable and each fiber \(p^{-1}(b)\) is homeomorphic to \([0,1]\), then \(p\) admits a section. In this paper, such a result is extended. Let us state two of the main results of this work. {Theorem 4.4.} Let \(p:E\to B\) be a Serre fibration of locally connected compacta with all fibers homeomorphic to a given 2-dimensional manifold. If \(B\in\roman{ANR}\), then any section of \(p\) over a closed subset \(A\subset B\) can be extended to a section of \(p\) over a neighborhood of \(A\). {Theorem 4.9.} Let \(p:E\to B\) be a Serre fibration of a locally connected compactum \(E\) onto an \(\roman{ANR}\)-compactum \(B\) with all fibers homeomorphic to a given 2-dimensional manifold \(M\). If \(M\) is not homeomorphic to \(S^2\) or the projective plane, then \(p\) admits a global section provided one of the following conditions holds: {(a)} \(\pi_1(M)\) is abelian and \(H^2(B;\pi_1(M))=0\). {(b)}\(\pi_1(M)\) is non-abelian, \(M\) is not homeomorphic to the Klein bottle, and \(\pi_1(B)=0\). {(c)} \(M\) is homeomorphic to the Klein bottle and \(\pi_1(B)=\pi_2(B)=0\). The authors' proof of Theorem 4.9 involves multivalued mappings, beginning with \(b\mapsto p^{-1}(b)\subset E\). Their technique encompasses finding a sequence of such mappings such that the diameters of the fibers converge to zero. It must of course be constructed in such a manner that the sequence converges to a limit which is an actual selection of \(p^{-1}\). Thus the limit is a section. They devote Sections 2 and 3 to the necessary facts about multivalued mappings and finally apply this theory in Section 4.