Fibre techniques in Nielsen periodic point theory on nil and solvmanifolds. I (Q1356944)

The number of fixed points of a mapping \(f:X\to X\) is not homotopy invariant: we can modify \(f\) to a homotopy equivalent mapping \(g\sim f\) which has extra fixed points. An appropriate homotopy-invariant characteristic of a mapping \(f\) is thus the smallest number \(M(f)\) of fixed points among all mappings \(g\sim f\). This definition is not exactly algorithmic because we cannot easily test all possible homotopy-equivalent mappings, but Nielsen has found a characteristic \(N(f)\) (called Nielsen number) which can be easily computed in terms of \(f\) only, and which, for many reasonable manifolds, coincides with \(M(f)\). (In general, \(N(f)\) is a lower bound for \(M(f)\).) A fixed point is a point for which the mapping \(f\) is periodic with period 1. Therefore, after we know the number of fixed points, the natural next question is to calculate the number of periodic points of period \(n>1\), i.e. points from which \(f^n(x)=f(f(\ldots(f(x))\ldots))\;(n\text{\;times})=x\). We can define \(M\Phi_n(f)\) as the smallest number of points for which \(g^n(x)=x\) among all mappings \(g\sim f\), and \(MP_n(f)\) as the smallest number of points \(x\) for which \(g^n(x)=x\) and \(g^m(x)\neq x\) for \(m<n\). For both numbers, there exist Nielsen-type numbers \(N\Phi_n(f)\) and \(NP_n(f)\) that provide, in general, lower bounds and, for reasonable manifolds, coincide with \(M\Phi_n(f)\) and \(MP_n(f)\). However, unlike the original Nielsen's numbers, for which good algorithms exist, we do not know how to compute these Nielsen-type numbers. In this paper, the authors show how to compute these Nielsen-type numbers for nil and solvmanifolds, i.e. for homogeneous spaces of nilpotent (correspondingly solvable) Lie groups. The computations are possible because of the explicit formulas that relate the Nielsen-type numbers for \(f\) with (computable) Nielsen numbers for the mappings \(f^{kn}\), for different \(k\). These results are proven under a special condition that holds for all self-maps on nilmanifolds and for ``most'' maps on solvmanifolds.