Volume 13, issue 2 (2013)

Download this article
Download this article For screen
For printing
Recent Issues

Volume 24
Issue 7, 3571–4137
Issue 6, 2971–3570
Issue 5, 2389–2970
Issue 4, 1809–2387
Issue 3, 1225–1808
Issue 2, 595–1223
Issue 1, 1–594

Volume 23, 9 issues

Volume 22, 8 issues

Volume 21, 7 issues

Volume 20, 7 issues

Volume 19, 7 issues

Volume 18, 7 issues

Volume 17, 6 issues

Volume 16, 6 issues

Volume 15, 6 issues

Volume 14, 6 issues

Volume 13, 6 issues

Volume 12, 4 issues

Volume 11, 5 issues

Volume 10, 4 issues

Volume 9, 4 issues

Volume 8, 4 issues

Volume 7, 4 issues

Volume 6, 5 issues

Volume 5, 4 issues

Volume 4, 2 issues

Volume 3, 2 issues

Volume 2, 2 issues

Volume 1, 2 issues

The Journal
About the Journal
Editorial Board
Subscriptions
 
Submission Guidelines
Submission Page
Policies for Authors
Ethics Statement
 
ISSN 1472-2739 (online)
ISSN 1472-2747 (print)
Author Index
To Appear
 
Other MSP Journals
Topological complexity of motion planning in projective product spaces

Jesús González, Mark Grant, Enrique Torres-Giese and Miguel Xicoténcatl

Algebraic & Geometric Topology 13 (2013) 1027–1047
Abstract

We study Farber’s topological complexity (TC) of Davis’ projective product spaces (PPS’s). We show that, in many nontrivial instances, the TC of PPS’s coming from at least two sphere factors is (much) lower than the dimension of the manifold. This is in marked contrast with the known situation for (usual) real projective spaces for which, in fact, the Euclidean immersion dimension and TC are two facets of the same problem. Low TC-values have been observed for infinite families of nonsimply connected spaces only for H-spaces, for finite complexes whose fundamental group has cohomological dimension at most 2, and now in this work for infinite families of PPS’s. We discuss general bounds for the TC (and the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category) of PPS’s, and compute these invariants for specific families of such manifolds. Some of our methods involve the use of an equivariant version of TC. We also give a characterization of the Euclidean immersion dimension of PPS’s through a generalized concept of axial maps or, alternatively (in an appendix), nonsingular maps. This gives an explicit explanation of the known relationship between the generalized vector field problem and the Euclidean immersion problem for PPS’s.

Keywords
topological complexity, projective product spaces, Euclidean immersions of manifolds, generalized axial maps, equivariant motion planning
Mathematical Subject Classification 2010
Primary: 55M30, 57R42
Secondary: 68T40
References
Publication
Received: 8 August 2012
Revised: 18 November 2012
Accepted: 26 November 2012
Published: 8 April 2013
Authors
Jesús González
Departamento de Matemáticas
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN
A.P. 14-740
México City 07000
México
http://chucha.math.cinvestav.mx/
Mark Grant
School of Mathematical Sciences
The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD
UK
http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/personal/pmzmg/
Enrique Torres-Giese
Departamento de Matemáticas
Universidad de Guanajuato
Guanajuato, Gto 36000
México
Miguel Xicoténcatl
Departamento de Matemáticas
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN
México City 07000
México