Categorical sequences

Nendorf, Rob; Scoville, Nick; Strom, Jeffrey

doi:10.2140/agt.2006.6.809

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Categorical sequences

Rob Nendorf, Nick Scoville and Jeffrey Strom

Algebraic & Geometric Topology 6 (2006) 809–838

DOI: 10.2140/agt.2006.6.809

arXiv: 0904.0619

Abstract

We define and study the categorical sequence of a space, which is a new formalism that streamlines the computation of the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category of a space $X$ by induction on its CW skeleta. The $k^{th}$ term in the categorical sequence of a CW complex $X$ , $σ_{X} (k)$ , is the least integer $n$ for which ${cat}_{X} (X_{n}) \geq k$ . We show that $σ_{X}$ is a well-defined homotopy invariant of $X$ . We prove that $σ_{X} (k + l) \geq σ_{X} (k) + σ_{X} (l)$ , which is one of three keys to the power of categorical sequences. In addition to this formula, we provide formulas relating the categorical sequences of spaces and some of their algebraic invariants, including their cohomology algebras and their rational models; we also find relations between the categorical sequences of the spaces in a fibration sequence and give a preliminary result on the categorical sequence of a product of two spaces in the rational case. We completely characterize the sequences which can arise as categorical sequences of formal rational spaces. The most important of the many examples that we offer is a simple proof of a theorem of Ghienne: if $X$ is a member of the Mislin genus of the Lie group $S p (3)$ , then $cat (X) = cat (S p (3))$ .

Keywords

categorical sequence, Lusternik–Schnirelmann category, CW skeleta, rational homotopy

Mathematical Subject Classification 2000

Primary: 55M30

Secondary: 55P62

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Publication

Received: 5 January 2006

Accepted: 23 April 2006

Published: 21 June 2006

Authors

Rob Nendorf
Department of Mathematics Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208-2730 USA

Nick Scoville
Department of Mathematics Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755-3551 USA

Jeffrey Strom
Department of Mathematics Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008 USA

Volume 6, issue 2 (2006)