Functorial compactification of linear spaces

Abstract

We define compactifications of vector spaces which are functorial with respect to certain linear maps. These "many-body" compactifications are manifolds with corners, and the linear maps lift to b-maps in the sense of Melrose. We derive a simple criterion under which the lifted maps are in fact b-fibrations, and identify how these restrict to boundary hypersurfaces. This theory is an application of a general result on the iterated blow-up of cleanly intersecting submanifolds which extends related results in the literature.

13 pages. Version 3 contains corrections and expanded discussion