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In general, if we have a map between CW-complexes, $f:X\to Y$, and $f$ is cellular, then is is clear that $f^{-1}(Y)$ (the inverse image, $f$ is not invertible in general) is also a CW-complex?

Since it's cellular, $f^{-1}(Y^n)$ must by closed and must contain $X^n$. I'm not sure what else I can say. Something about it intersecting a finite number of cells?

Ultimately, I am trying to use this to prove the following for CW-spectra: Let $f:E\to F$ be a function of spectra (in the strict sense here) and F' be a cofinal subspectrum of $F$. Then there is a cofinal subspectrum E' of $E$ such that $f$ maps E' into F'.

My initial intuition was to show that f^{-1}(F') was the desired subspectrum, but I got stymied at the very first step because I don't know much about CW spectra. I guess I could just work with nice spaces or something to simplify this...

Thanks! Jon

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    Perhaps a proof by indu$c$tion? That's how things always seem to be proved about CW complexes...2011-10-05

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I guess you are reading Adams' book?

So in Adams' terms a (strict) function $f$ of degree $r$ is a sequence of maps $f_n:E_n \to F_{n-r}$ such that the relevant diagram commutes for all $n \in \mathbb{Z}$

So we simply set E' to be the subspectrum of cells of the $E_n$ that are mapped into E'_{n-r}. You can then check that this forms a cofinal spectrum.

(Actually I found this difficult as well. Either someone told me how to do it, or I found a proof somewhere, so really I shouldn't take credit for this)

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    Sure, I mean, we might as well assume that, as long as we don't care about things up to homotopy, right? I was just wondering if there was some reason Adams never explicitly said that.2011-10-06