Infinite Dimensional Topology

Infinite-Dimensional Topology

The first part of this book is a text for graduate courses in topology. In chapters 1 - 5, part of the basic material of plane topology, combinatorial topology, dimension theory and ANR theory is presented. For a student who will go on in geometric or algebraic topology this material is a prerequisite for later work. Chapter 6 is an introduction to infinite-dimensional topology; it uses for the most part geometric methods, and gets to spectacular results fairly quickly. The second part of this book, chapters 7 & 8, is part of geometric topology and is meant for the more advanced mathematician interested in manifolds. The text is self-contained for readers with a modest knowledge of general topology and linear algebra; the necessary background material is collected in chapter 1, or developed as needed.One can look upon this book as a complete and self-contained proof of Toruńczyk's Hilbert cube manifold characterization theorem: a compact ANR X is a manifold modeled on the Hilbert cube if and only if X satisfies the disjoint-cells property. In the process of proving this result several interesting and useful detours are made.

Selected Topics in Infinite-dimensional Topology

Topology of Infinite-Dimensional Manifolds

An infinite-dimensional manifold is a topological manifold modeled on some infinite-dimensional homogeneous space called a model space. In this book, the following spaces are considered model spaces: Hilbert space (or non-separable Hilbert spaces), the Hilbert cube, dense subspaces of Hilbert spaces being universal spaces for absolute Borel spaces, the direct limit of Euclidean spaces, and the direct limit of Hilbert cubes (which is homeomorphic to the dual of a separable infinite-dimensional Banach space with bounded weak-star topology). This book is designed for graduate students to acquire knowledge of fundamental results on infinite-dimensional manifolds and their characterizations. To read and understand this book, some background is required even for senior graduate students in topology, but that background knowledge is minimized and is listed in the first chapter so that references can easily be found. Almost all necessary background information is found in Geometric Aspects of General Topology, the author's first book. Many kinds of hyperspaces and function spaces are investigated in various branches of mathematics, which are mostly infinite-dimensional. Among them, many examples of infinite-dimensional manifolds have been found. For researchers studying such objects, this book will be very helpful. As outstanding applications of Hilbert cube manifolds, the book contains proofs of the topological invariance of Whitehead torsion and Borsuk’s conjecture on the homotopy type of compact ANRs. This is also the first book that presents combinatorial ∞-manifolds, the infinite-dimensional version of combinatorial n-manifolds, and proofs of two remarkable results, that is, any triangulation of each manifold modeled on the direct limit of Euclidean spaces is a combinatorial ∞-manifold and the Hauptvermutung for them is true.