Lusternik-Schnirelmann theory for fixed points of maps (Q1423976)

The paper contains an interesting generalization of the Lusternik-Schnirelman theory for gradient-like flows. The authors consider homotopy equivalences \(\phi : X\to X\) from a Hausdorff space into itself, which are ``gradient like'' i.e., when there exists a function \(f: X \to \mathbb R,\) bounded below, such that \( f(\phi(x)) \leq f(x)\) for all \(x \in X.\) The basic result is as follows: If on the set \(f^b= \{x\in X| f(x)\leq b\}\): a) \(f(\phi(x)) < f(x) \) unless \( \phi(x)=x\). b) The pair \((\phi, f)\) verifies the following condition of Palais-Smale type: If \(f(x) -f(\phi(x))\) is not bounded away from zero on a bounded set \(A\subset f^b\) then \(\phi\) has a fixed point on the closure of \(A.\) Then, the category of the set of fixed points of \(\phi\) on the level set \( f= b\) is not less than the category of \(f^b.\) Actually, the paper contains much stronger results. If \(G\) is a compact Lie group and \(X\) is a \(G\) space, then a relative version of the \(G\)-category constructed by the authors in the \(G\)-equivariant setting, under some natural assumptions, allows to estimate from below the number of fixed points of \(\phi \) on \(f^{-1}([a,b])\) in terms of \(G \text{-cat} \, f^b -G\text{-cat }\, f^a.\)