Tangential thickness of manifolds (1104.4136v3)

Abstract: Given two compact n-dimensional manifolds in the smooth, piecewise linear or topological categories, basic results of B. Mazur and others give simple criteria for determining whether their products with Euclidean spaces of sufficiently large dimension are isomorphic in the given category. This paper studies such questions when the dimensions of the Euclidean space do not satisfy such a condition, mainly for topological manifolds homotopy equivalent to lens spaces with odd prime order fundamental groups. In particular, complete information is obtained for homotopy lens spaces in most dimensions when the Euclidean space is even dimensional. The proofs use basic techniques from surgery theory and a variety of results from homotopy theory, including results of Cohen, Moore and Neisendorfer related to finite exponents of certain unstable homotopy groups.