Effectual topological complexity

We introduce the effectual topological complexity (ETC) of a [Formula: see text]-space [Formula: see text]. This is a [Formula: see text]-equivariant homotopy invariant sitting in between the effective topological complexity of the pair [Formula: see text] and the (regular) topological complexity of the orbit space [Formula: see text]. We study ETC for spheres and surfaces with antipodal involution, obtaining a full computation in the case of the torus. This allows us to prove the vanishing of twice the nontrivial obstruction responsible for the fact that the topological complexity of the Klein bottle is [Formula: see text]. In addition, this gives a counterexample to the possibility — suggested in Pavešić’s work on the topological complexity of a map — that ETC of [Formula: see text] would agree with Farber’s [Formula: see text] whenever the projection map [Formula: see text] is finitely sheeted. We conjecture that ETC of spheres with antipodal action recasts the Hopf invariant one problem, and describe (conjecturally optimal) effectual motion planners.

THE ZEROTH -STABLE HOMOTOPY SHEAF OF A MOTIVIC SPACE

We establish a kind of ‘degree $0$ Freudenthal ${\mathbb {G}_m}$ -suspension theorem’ in motivic homotopy theory. From this we deduce results about the conservativity of the $\mathbb P^1$ -stabilization functor. In order to establish these results, we show how to compute certain pullbacks in the cohomology of a strictly homotopy-invariant sheaf in terms of the Rost–Schmid complex. This establishes the main conjecture of [2], which easily implies the aforementioned results.

Smooth functorial field theories from B-fields and D-branes

In the Lagrangian approach to 2-dimensional sigma models, B-fields and D-branes contribute topological terms to the action of worldsheets of both open and closed strings. We show that these terms naturally fit into a 2-dimensional, smooth open-closed functorial field theory (FFT) in the sense of Atiyah, Segal, and Stolz–Teichner. We give a detailed construction of this smooth FFT, based on the definition of a suitable smooth bordism category. In this bordism category, all manifolds are equipped with a smooth map to a spacetime target manifold. Further, the object manifolds are allowed to have boundaries; these are the endpoints of open strings stretched between D-branes. The values of our FFT are obtained from the B-field and its D-branes via transgression. Our construction generalises work of Bunke–Turner–Willerton to include open strings. At the same time, it generalises work of Moore–Segal about open-closed TQFTs to include target spaces. We provide a number of further features of our FFT: we show that it depends functorially on the B-field and the D-branes, we show that it is thin homotopy invariant, and we show that it comes equipped with a positive reflection structure in the sense of Freed–Hopkins. Finally, we describe how our construction is related to the classification of open-closed TQFTs obtained by Lauda–Pfeiffer.

Remarks on fixed point assertions in digital topology

Several recent papers in digital topology have sought to obtain fixed point results by mimicking the use of tools from classical topology, such as complete metric spaces and homotopy invariant fixed point theory. We show that some of the published assertions based on these tools are incorrect or trivial; we offer improvements on others.

Transcendental linking polynomials of virtual string links

In this paper, we define transcendental polynomial invariants for two-component virtual string links. One of these invariants is a strictly refinement of the linking polynomial in [M. Xu and H. Gao, Linking polynomials of virtual string links, Sci. China Math. 61(7) (2018) 1287–1302]. It is a homotopy invariant and can distinguish some virtual string links from their mirror images. We also define a transcendental polynomial invariant for two-component flat virtual string links. These invariants can be used to study the periodicity and linking crossing number of virtual string links.

Topological complexity of the work map

We introduce the topological complexity of the work map associated to a robot system. In broad terms, this measures the complexity of any algorithm controlling, not just the motion of the configuration space of the given system, but the task for which the system has been designed. From a purely topological point of view, this is a homotopy invariant of a map which generalizes the classical topological complexity of a space.