An application of topological equivalence to Morse theory

Abstract

In a previous paper, under the assumption that the Riemannian metric is special, the author proved some results about the moduli spaces and CW structures arising from Morse theory. By virtue of topological equivalence, this paper extends those results by dropping the assumption on the metric. In particular, we give a strong solution to the following classical question: Does a Morse function on a compact Riemannian manifold give rise to a CW decomposition that is homeomorphic to the manifold?