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Does there exist a surjective immersion $\mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}^2$ which is not a diffeomorphism?

I tried to modify $\exp: \mathbb{C} \to \mathbb{C}$ to be surjective, but I find it hard to preserve the property of being immersion.

I also noticed that if we replace $\mathbb{R}^2$ with $S^2$ or any other compact simply connected manifold, no such immersion exists, because then it would be a covering map (as a local diffeomorphism from compact space, thus proper), but since the manifold is simply connected, it must be a diffeomorphism.

xyzzyz
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    The answer is yes, but what did you try to solve this problem by yourself? – Moishe Kohan Nov 05 '13 at 20:12
  • Sure I did. I couldn't come up with any example, though. I'll amend the question with my approaches. – xyzzyz Nov 05 '13 at 20:48
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    The trick is to find a map from the open disk to a simply connected planar domain. First map the disk onto the annulus (I think, you can do it yourself). Then stretch part of your disk to cover the hole in the middle if the annulus. Then the image is simply connected and the map is a local homeomorphism. – Moishe Kohan Nov 05 '13 at 21:00
  • I think the map cannot be proper, since if it was, it would extend to a diffeo. between the compactifications ($\mathbb S^2$ , which would then restrict to a diffeomorphism between $\mathbb S^2-{\infty}$ to itself. – user99680 Nov 05 '13 at 21:20
  • @user99680: that's right. This is a special case of Ehresmann's theorem that a proper local homeomorphism is a covering map to its image. – Moishe Kohan Nov 05 '13 at 21:31
  • I am not sure why there are four votes to close this question: After my first comment, xyzzyz explained his/her thoughts about the problem; the problem itself is well-formulated and at the level typical for this site. – Moishe Kohan Nov 05 '13 at 22:30
  • I am wondering if $x+iy\mapsto\exp(x+iy)+y/2$ works. – Carsten S Nov 06 '13 at 08:30

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Here is an explicit construction. Start with the map $f(z)=z^2+1$. It maps complex plane onto itself but has critical point at zero. Let's remove zero from the domain. The map is now a surjective immersion but the domain is not simply connected. Thus, remove a ray starting from the origin from the domain. Say, the ray consisting of all nonpositive real numbers. The resulting map is still onto. Now, precompose this map with a diffeomorphism from the complex plane to the complex plane minus the ray. That's your example. Now, try to fund a similar map onto the entire Riemann sphere.

Edit 1: The example I wrote above did not work since $f^{-1}(1)=0$. Here is a correct example. Consider the function $f(z)=z^2(z-1)$. It has critical points at $z=0$ and $z=2/3$. Now, remove from the domain the real interval $[0, 2/3]$ as well as the ray $\{it: t\ge 0\}$ in the imaginary axis. Call the resulting domain $D$. One then verifies that $f(D)={\mathbb C}$ (it is not hard, just a bit tedious). The domain $D$ is simply-connected, hence, take a diffeomorphism $g: {\mathbb C}\to D$ and consider the composition $h=f\circ g: {\mathbb C}\to {\mathbb C}$. This map is surjective, locally diffeomorphic but not injective. Personally, I prefer a pictorial description to such explicit maps, such description is given in my comments above.

Another personal remark: Once, I almost convinced myself that a locally injective holomorphic map $h$ of the unit disk $D$ onto a simply-connected domain $G$ has to be injective. Here is the bogus argument I had: Consider the multivalued holomorphic map $f=h^{-1}: G\to D$. Since the domain of this map is simply-connected and the map is locally well-defined (here we use the assumption that $h$ has no critical points), the monodromy principle implies that $f$ has a well-defined branch $g$, which will then be inverse to $h$. Hence, $h: D\to G$ is invertible. The mistake in this argument was that the multivalued map $f$ is not obtained via analytic continuation along paths; therefore, the monodromy principle does not apply to it.

One more thing: It would be interesting to give an example of an entire function $f: {\mathbb C}\to {\mathbb C}$ which has no critical points, is surjective and not injective.

Edit 2: See this post at mathoverflow for the proof that the entire function $f: {\mathbb C}\to {\mathbb C}$, $$ f(z)= z\int_0^z e^{h(w)}dw,$$ where $$ h(w)= (e^w -1)/w, $$
has no critical points and is surjective.

Moishe Kohan
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  • Don't you mean post-compose the map from $\mathbb C -[0,\infty)$ with a self-diffeomorphism of $\mathbb C$ – user99680 Nov 05 '13 at 21:29
  • @user104254: You are right, I should have done my computations on the paper before typing. I will correct and update the answer (one has to use polynomial of degree 3 for the argument in this example to work). – Moishe Kohan Nov 05 '13 at 21:46
  • It looks fine now. :) – user104254 Nov 06 '13 at 02:47
  • Can you give an example of diffeomorphism $g: {\mathbb C}\to D$? – Hans Feb 26 '19 at 01:33
  • @Hans: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1253880/diffeomorphism-from-disk-to-plane – Moishe Kohan Feb 26 '19 at 05:16
  • That question is mapping onto a full disk. Your $D$ here is the whole complex plane with an L shaped cutout. I do not see the connection between them. – Hans Feb 26 '19 at 07:50
  • @Hans One usually learns how to do this in a Complex Analysis class. Or you can always just quote the Riemann Mapping Theorem. Or check the example of an entire surjective function ${\mathbb C}\to {\mathbb C}$ without crit points. – Moishe Kohan Feb 26 '19 at 16:15