Deformation retracts to intersections of Whitney stratifications

Abstract

. We give a counterexample to a conjecture of Eyral on the existence of deformation retracts to intersections of Whitney stratifications embedded in a smooth manifold. We then prove that the conjecture holds if the stratifications are definable in some o-minimal structure without assuming any regularity conditions. Moreover, we also show that the conjecture holds for Whitney stratifications if they intersect transversally.