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Asaf Shachar
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Does pullback in the category of smooth manifolds always exists?

I am looking for an example where $f:Y\to X$ and $f':Y'\to X$, are both smooth maps of smooth manifolds, but the pullback does not exist.

Remarks:

  1. I know there are examples where the pullback in the smooth category exists, but is different from the fiber product $Y \times_X Y' = \lbrace (y,y') \in Y \times Y'\mid f(y)=f'(y') \rbrace$ (which is always the pullback in the topological category).

This is not what I am looking for, since in this example the smooth pullback (as the space satisfying the required universal property) exists.

  1. In any case where the fiber product is a (smooth) submanifold, it is the pullback. Therefore, any possible example must be one whose fiber product is not a (smooth) submanifold. (In particular $f,f'$ can't be transverse to each other)

  2. In this answer there is a possible way of poving some limits does not exist. Maybe it's possible to use this method here also, but so far I didn't find an example

Asaf Shachar
  • 6.7k
  • 2
  • 20
  • 70