We prove the formula $TC(Gast H)=max{TC(G), TC(H), cd(Gtimes H)}$ for the topological complexity of the free product of discrete groups with cohomological dimension >2.
The Lusternik-Schnirelmann category and topological complexity are important invariants of manifolds (and more generally, topological spaces). We study the behavior of these invariants under the operation of taking the connected sum of manifolds. We
give a complete answer for the LS-categoryof orientable manifolds, $cat(M# N)=max{cat M,cat N}$. For topological complexity we prove the inequality $TC (M# N)gemax{TC M,TC N}$ for simply connected manifolds.
We use a vector field flow defined through a cubulation of a closed manifold to reconcile the partially defined commutative product on geometric cochains with the standard cup product on cubical cochains, which is fully defined and commutative only u
p to coherent homotopies. The interplay between intersection and cup product dates back to the beginnings of homology theory, but, to our knowledge, this result is the first to give an explicit cochain level comparison between these approaches.
Let $mathrm{TC}_r(X)$ denote the $r$-th topological complexity of a space $X$. In many cases, the generating function $sum_{rge 1}mathrm{TC}_{r+1}(X)x^r$ is a rational function $frac{P(x)}{(1-x)^2}$ where $P(x)$ is a polynomial with $P(1)=mathrm{cat}
(X)$, that is, the asymptotic growth of $mathrm{TC}_r(X)$ with respect to $r$ is $mathrm{cat}(X)$. In this paper, we introduce a lower bound $mathrm{MTC}_r(X)$ of $mathrm{TC}_r(X)$ for a rational space $X$, and estimate the growth of $mathrm{MTC}_r(X)$.
We define and develop a homotopy invariant notion for the topological complexity of a map $f:X to Y$, denoted TC($f$), that interacts with TC($X$) and TC($Y$) in the same way cat($f$) interacts with cat($X$) and cat($Y$). Furthermore, TC($f$) and cat
($f$) satisfy the same inequalities as TC($X$) and cat($X$). We compare it to other invariants defined in the papers [15,16,17,18,20]. We apply TC($f$) to studying group homomorphisms $f:Hto G$.
We give a new proof of an index theorem for fiber bundles of compact topological manifolds due to Dwyer, Weiss, and Williams, which asserts that the parametrized $A$-theory characteristic of such a fiber bundle factors canonically through the assembl
y map of $A$-theory. Furthermore our main result shows a refinement of this statement by providing such a factorization for an extended $A$-theory characteristic, defined on the parametrized topological cobordism category. The proof uses a convenient framework for bivariant theories and recent results of Gomez-Lopez and Kupers on the homotopy type of the topological cobordism category. We conjecture that this lift of the extended $A$-theory characteristic becomes highly connected as the manifold dimension increases.