Decomposition of the diagonal map (Q1863511)

The author develops a new powerful technique which, in particular, allows him to control the behavior of the Ljusternik-Schnirelman category \(\text{cat}\) and weak Ljusternik-Schnirelman category \(\text{wcat}\) of spaces under attaching cells. This can be considered as a far developed generalization of the well-known Berstein-Hilton results. Given a space \(X\) and a natural number \(k\), let \(\wedge^k X\) be the \(k\)-fold smash-product and \(d: X \to \wedge^k X\) be the reduced diagonal. Given a subspace \(Y\) of \(X\), the weak category \(\text{wcat}_X Y\) is defined as the least \(k\) such that the composition \(d i: Y \to \wedge^k X\) is inessential; here \(i: Y \to X\) is the inclusion. Now, assume that \(X\) is \(CW\)-complex, \(L\) is a subcomplex of \(X\) and \(L=K\cup e^n\), where \(e^n \) is an attached cell. Denote by \(q: K \to S^n \) the quotient map. The author found a way to describe the maps \(h: S^n \to \wedge^k X\) such that \(qh=di\). Assuming that \(\text{wcat}_X L\leq k\), we conclude that \(\text{wcat}_X K \leq k\) whenever there exists an inessential \(h\) as above (and vice versa). Therefore we have a way to detect whether \(\text{wcat}_X K \leq k\). Similar results hold for category instead of weak category (the author mentions it, but does not formulate these results explicitly). As applications, the author obtains upper bounds for (weak) category. For example, if \(K\) is a subcomplex of \(X\) with \(\dim K \leq n\), then \(\text{wcat}_X K \leq \text{wcat}_X K^{(a-1)}+\text{wcat}_X K^{(b-1)}\) where \(a+b=n\). Another result (where \(u_r\in H^r(X;\pi^r(X))\) is the fundamental class) is the following. Let \(K\subset X\) be a subcomplex with \(\text{wcat}_X K^{(m-1)} \leq c\). Assume that \(u_{2^k(m+1)-1}^2=0\) for \(k=0,1, \ldots , t\). Then \(\text{wcat}_X K^{2^t(m+1)-1} \leq 2^t c\). The author also gets some estimates for \(\text{cat }Sp(n)\) (including a new proof of the equality \(\text{cat }Sp(2)=3\)), some estimates for the category of skeletons of certain free loop spaces, the category of 4-cell complexes, etc.