In geometric topology, a field within mathematics, the obstruction to a homotopy equivalence of finite CW-complexes being a simple homotopy equivalence is its Whitehead torsion which is an element in the Whitehead group . These concepts are named after the mathematician J. H. C. Whitehead.
The Whitehead torsion is important in applying surgery theory to non-simply connected manifolds of dimension > 4: for simply-connected manifolds, the Whitehead group vanishes, and thus homotopy equivalences and simple homotopy equivalences are the same. The applications are to differentiable manifolds, PL manifolds and topological manifolds. The proofs were first obtained in the early 1960s by Stephen Smale, for differentiable manifolds. The development of handlebody theory allowed much the same proofs in the differentiable and PL categories. The proofs are much harder in the topological category, requiring the theory of Robion Kirby and Laurent C. Siebenmann. The restriction to manifolds of dimension greater than four are due to the application of the Whitney trick for removing double points.
In generalizing the h-cobordism theorem, which is a statement about simply connected manifolds, to non-simply connected manifolds, one must distinguish simple homotopy equivalences and non-simple homotopy equivalences. While an h-cobordism W between simply-connected closed connected manifolds M and N of dimension n > 4 is isomorphic to a cylinder (the corresponding homotopy equivalence can be taken to be a diffeomorphism, PL-isomorphism, or homeomorphism, respectively), the s-cobordism theorem states that if the manifolds are not simply-connected, an h-cobordism is a cylinder if and only if the Whitehead torsion of the inclusion vanishes.
