Smoothing theory revisited

Abstract

We give a concise proof of the fundamental theorem of smoothing theory in the special case when a smoothing exists.

This paper has been withdrawn by the authors. The proof of the verification of axiom 1 for the smoothing functor that is given in the paper is false, since it would violate what is known in dimension 4. If U is a subset of V and both are diffeomorphic to R^4, then the restriction map of smoothing spaces sm(V) -> sm(U) need not be one-to-one on path components. Thus axiom 1 is violated in dimension 4. The verification of axiom 1 in higher dimensions is probably a consequence of the product structure theorem