This post is concerned withI am interested in obtaining injectivity of a $C^1$ map from the nonvanishing of the minors of its Jacobian matrix. Here is a brief history of the topic.
In 1953, Nobel laureate in economics Paul SamuelsonSamuelson conjecturedasked the following:
If the upper left-hand principal minors of the Jacobian matrix of a map $F: \mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$ do not vanish (later called Samuelson map), thenis it true that $F$ ismust be injective.?
In 1965, David GaleGale and Hukukane Nikaido givedgave a counterexample in $\mathbb{R}^2$. In the sametheir paper they proved the celebratedfollowing is proved
Gale-Nikaido theorem: If all the principal minors (in stead of only the upper left-hand ones) of the Jacobian matrix of $F: \mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$ are positive, then $F$ is injective.
Since then, some effort has been made to weaken the assumption in Gale-Nikaido theorem assince the assumption still seems to be quitetoo restrictive in application. A comprehensive dicussion along this line can be found in T. Parthasarathy, On Global Univalence Theorems, Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 977, 1983. This topicIn the case of polynomial map, this is also related to the celebratedreal version of Jacobian conjecture (real version) about polynomial maps.
TheA possible generalization I amI'm interested in is the following, which seems to be still open.
Question: If all the principal minors of the Jacobian matrix of $F: \mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n$ do not vanish (they can be of different signs), is $F$ necessarily injective?
In the same paper of Gale and NikaidoNikaido's paper, the case of $\mathbb{R}^2$ was answered in affirmative;affirmative, the case of $\mathbb{R}^3$ was claimed in affirmative, yet (yet no complete proof seems to be known for far).
Is there anyone who happensMy motivation comes from trying to know the recent progress along this line?make a change of variables to globally rectify a curved coordinate system so that Plancherel theorem can be applied. Any information willwould be appreciated! : )