Smoothing conjecture for closed cubical manifolds in codimension two

Let NN be a closed, oriented, cubical nn-manifold embedded in Rn+2\mathbb{R}^{n+2}, with n>2n>2. A transverse field of 2-planes means a continuous choice of a 2-dimensional plane transverse to NN at every point.

Smoothing conjecture. Every such NN is smoothable. More precisely, NN admits a transverse field of 2-planes and therefore there is an arbitrarily small topological isotopy carrying NN onto a smooth manifold in Rn+2\mathbb{R}^{n+2}.

This conjecture concerns smoothing higher-dimensional cubical manifolds embedded in codimension two. The stated smoothing implication uses a theorem of J. H. C. Whitehead, but the source does not provide evidence that the conjecture itself has been resolved.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Juan Pablo Díaz, Gabriela Hinojosa, Rogelio Valdez and Alberto Verjovsky, “Smoothing closed gridded surfaces embedded in R^4”, arXiv:1702.05467 (2017).

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