Abstract
We begin by stating some basic results about Morse theory. A nice description of what we need about Morse theory is given in Part I of Milnor’s text [Mi2]. We will restrict our attention to open subsets M of ℝs . Let ϕ be a smooth function on M. A point p ∈ M is a critical point of ϕ if ∂ϕ/∂xk(p) = 0 for 1 ≤ k ≤ s. A critical point p is nondegenerate if the (real) Hessian matrix (∂2ϕ/∂xj∂xk(p)) is nonsingular. Then one defines the index of ϕ at p to be the number of negative eigenvalues of this matrix. Nondegenerate critical points are necessarily isolated. A Morse function ρ on M is a smooth real function such that Ma ≡ {x ∈ M : ρ(x) ≤ a} is compact for all a, all critical points of ρ are nondegenerate, and ρ(p1) ≠ ρ(p2) for critical points p1 ≠ p2. The following lemma produces Morse functions.
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© 1998 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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(1998). Topology of Hulls. In: Several Complex Variables and Banach Algebras. Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol 35. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-22586-9_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-22586-9_22
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
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