An infinite-dimensional phenomenon in finite-dimensional metric topology

Abstract

We show that there are homotopy equivalences $h:N\to M$ between closed manifolds which are induced by cell-like maps $p:N\to X$ and $q:M\to X$ but which are not homotopic to homeomorphisms. The phenomenon is based on construction of cell-like maps that kill certain $\mathbb{L}$-classes. The image space in these constructions is necessarily infinite-dimensional. In dimension $>6$ we classify all such homotopy equivalences. As an application, we show that such homotopy equivalences are realized by deformations of Riemannian manifolds in Gromov-Hausdorff space preserving a contractibility function.