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Asaf Shachar
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Can we perturb a map $\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^n$ to have high rank?

Let $\mathbb{D}^n$ be the closed $n$-dimensional unit ball, and let $f:\mathbb{D}^n \to \mathbb{R}^n$ be smooth. Suppose that $df$ is invertible outside a set of Hausdorff dimension $\le n-1$.

Question: Do there there exist $f_n \in C^{\infty}(\mathbb{D}^n, \mathbb{R}^n)$ such that $f_n \to f$ in $W^{1,2}(\mathbb{D}^n, \mathbb{R}^n)$ and $\text{rank}(df_n) \ge n-1 $ everywhere on $ \mathbb{D}^n $?

Asaf Shachar
  • 6.7k
  • 2
  • 20
  • 70