Constructing generic smooth maps of a manifold into a surface with prescribed singular loci
It is known that the singular set of a generic smooth map of an -dimensional manifold into a surface is a closed 1-dimensional submanifold of and that it has a natural stratification induced by the absolute index. In this paper, we give a complete characterization of those 1-dimensional (stratified) submanifolds which arise as the singular set of a generic map in terms of the homology class they represent.