Stable systolic category of manifolds and the cup-length (Q2431377)

Due to a theorem of Gromov it is known that \(\text{cup-length}_{\mathbb Q}\,M\), the rational cup length of a closed manifold \(M\), is less than or equal to \(\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}M\), the stable systolic category of \(M\). In this paper, although the authors assert their belief by which, in general, this inequality can be strict, they prove that equality holds for simply connected manifolds of dimension less than or equal to \(7\). In the non simply connected case they also show that, for \(\dim M\leq 5\), \(\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}M\leq \widetilde{\text{cup-length}}\, M\) (here, \(\widetilde{\text{cup-length}}\, M\) denotes the twisted cup length of \(M\)). Thus, in this case, the conjecture of Katz by which the systolic category of a manifold is bounded above by the classical Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of \(M\) is satisfied. Interesting general results on homotopy theory of closed manifolds are needed, and proven, to achieve the results above.