Gluing diffeomorphisms, bi-Lipschitz mappings and homeomorphisms

Abstract

Cerf and Palais independently proved a remarkable result about extending diffeomorphisms defined on smooth balls in a manifold to global diffeomorphisms of the manifold onto itself. We explain Palais' argument and show how to extend it to the class of homeomorphisms and bi-Lipschitz homeomorphisms. While Palais' argument is surprising, it is elementary and short. However, its extension to bi-Lipschitz homeomorphisms and homeomorphisms requires deep results: the stable homeomorphism and the annulus theorems.