On retracts, absolute retracts, and folds in cographs

Let G and H be two cographs. We show that the problem to determine whether H is a retract of G is NP-complete. We show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the size of H. When restricted to the class of threshold graphs or to the class of trivially perfect graphs, the problem becomes tractable in polynomial time. The problem is also soluble when one cograph is given as an induced subgraph of the other. We characterize absolute retracts of cographs.Comment: 15 page

Absolute neighbourhood retracts and spaces of holomorphic maps from Stein manifolds to Oka manifolds

The basic result of Oka theory, due to Gromov, states that every continuous map $f$ from a Stein manifold $S$ to an elliptic manifold $X$ can be deformed to a holomorphic map. It is natural to ask whether this can be done for all $f$ at once, in a way that depends continuously on $f$ and leaves $f$ fixed if it is holomorphic to begin with. In other words, is \scrO(S,X) a deformation retract of \scrC(S,X)? We prove that it is if $S$ has a strictly plurisubharmonic Morse exhaustion with finitely many critical points; in particular, if $S$ is affine algebraic. The only property of $X$ used in the proof is the parametric Oka property with approximation with respect to finite polyhedra, so our theorem holds under the weaker assumption that $X$ is an Oka manifold. Our main tool, apart from Oka theory itself, is the theory of absolute neighbourhood retracts. We also make use of the mixed model structure on the category of topological spaces.Comment: Version 2: A few very minor improvements to the exposition. Version 3: Another few very minor improvements to the exposition. To appear in Proceedings AM

On Murayama's theorem on extensor properties of G-spaces of given orbit types

We develop a method of extending actions of compact transformation groups which is then applied to the problem of preservation of equivariant extensor property by passing to a subspace of given orbit types