Embedded Morse theory and relative splitting of cobordisms of manifolds

Abstract

We prove that an embedded cobordism between manifolds with boundary can be split into a sequence of right product and left product cobordisms, if the codimension of the embedding is at least two. This is a topological counterpart of the algebraic splitting theorem for embedded cobordisms of the first author, A. Nemethi and A. Ranicki. In the codimension one case, we provide a slightly weaker statement. We also give proofs of rearrangement and cancellation theorems for handles of embedded submanifolds with boundary.