Front cover image for Spaces of PL manifolds and categories of simple maps

Spaces of PL manifolds and categories of simple maps

Since its introduction by Friedhelm Waldhausen in the 1970s, the algebraic K-theory of spaces has been recognized as the main tool for studying parametrized phenomena in the theory of manifolds. However, a full proof of the equivalence relating the two areas has not appeared until now. This book presents such a proof, essentially completing Waldhausen's program from more than thirty years ago. The main result is a stable parametrized h-cobordism theorem, derived from a homotopy equivalence between a space of PL h-cobordisms on a space X and the classifying space of a category of simple maps of spaces having X as deformation retract

eBook, English, 2013
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2013