Morse–Bott theory on posets and a homological Lusternik–Schnirelmann theorem

We develop Morse–Bott theory on posets, generalizing both discrete Morse–Bott theory for regular complexes and Morse theory on posets. Moreover, we prove a Lusternik–Schnirelmann theorem for general matchings on posets, in particular, for Morse–Bott functions.

On the topological complexity of manifolds with abelian fundamental group

We find conditions which ensure that the topological complexity of a closed manifold M with abelian fundamental group is nonmaximal, and see through examples that our conditions are sharp. This generalizes results of Costa and Farber on the topological complexity of spaces with small fundamental group. Relaxing the commutativity condition on the fundamental group, we also generalize results of Dranishnikov on the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category of the cofibre of the diagonal map Δ : M → M × M {\Delta:M\to M\times M} for nonorientable surfaces by establishing the nonmaximality of this invariant for a large class of manifolds.

A Randomized Greedy Algorithm for Piecewise Linear Motion Planning

We describe and implement a randomized algorithm that inputs a polyhedron, thought of as the space of states of some automated guided vehicle R, and outputs an explicit system of piecewise linear motion planners for R. The algorithm is designed in such a way that the cardinality of the output is probabilistically close (with parameters chosen by the user) to the minimal possible cardinality.This yields the first automated solution for robust-to-noise robot motion planning in terms of simplicial complexity (SC) techniques, a discretization of Farber’s topological complexity TC. Besides its relevance toward technological applications, our work reveals that, unlike other discrete approaches to TC, the SC model can recast Farber’s invariant without having to introduce costly subdivisions. We develop and implement our algorithm by actually discretizing Macías-Virgós and Mosquera-Lois’ notion of homotopic distance, thus encompassing computer estimations of other sectional category invariants as well, such as the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of polyhedra.

LS-category of moment-angle manifolds and higher order Massey products

Using the combinatorics of the underlying simplicial complex K, we give various upper and lower bounds for the Lusternik–Schnirelmann (LS) category of moment-angle complexes 𝒵 K {\mathcal{Z}_{K}} . We describe families of simplicial complexes and combinatorial operations which allow for a systematic description of the LS-category. In particular, we characterize the LS-category of moment-angle complexes 𝒵 K {\mathcal{Z}_{K}} over triangulated d-manifolds K for d ≤ 2 {d\leq 2} , as well as higher-dimensional spheres built up via connected sum, join, and vertex doubling operations. We show that the LS-category closely relates to vanishing of Massey products in H * ⁢ ( 𝒵 K ) {H^{*}(\mathcal{Z}_{K})} , and through this connection we describe first structural properties of Massey products in moment-angle manifolds. Some of the further applications include calculations of the LS-category and the description of conditions for vanishing of Massey products for moment-angle manifolds over fullerenes, Pogorelov polytopes and k-neighborly complexes, which double as important examples of hyperbolic manifolds.

Homotopic distance between maps

We show that well-known invariants like Lusternik–Schnirelmann category and topological complexity are particular cases of a more general notion, that we call homotopic distance between two maps. As a consequence, several properties of those invariants can be proved in a unified way and new results arise.

Topological complexity of real Grassmannians

We use some detailed knowledge of the cohomology ring of real Grassmann manifolds G k (ℝ n ) to compute zero-divisor cup-length and estimate topological complexity of motion planning for k-linear subspaces in ℝ n . In addition, we obtain results about monotonicity of Lusternik–Schnirelmann category and topological complexity of G k (ℝ n ) as a function of n.

Min-Max Theory for Cell Complexes

In the study of smooth functions on manifolds, min-max theory provides a mechanism for identifying critical values of a function. We introduce a discretized version of this theory associated to a discrete Morse function on a (regular) cell complex. As applications we prove a discrete version of the mountain pass lemma and give an alternate proof of a discrete Lusternik–Schnirelmann theorem.