A formula for the coincidence Reidemeister trace of selfmaps on bouquets of circles (Q1029920)

The Reidemeister trace has been defined in connection with fixed point theory. There are some methods to compute this trace (as in [\textit{E. Fadell} and \textit{S. Husseini}, Contemp. Math. 21, 59--98 (1983; Zbl 0563.55001)]), and this trace is closely related to the indices of the Nielsen classes. The present work considers the similar problem for coincidences of a pair of maps from a bouquet \(X\) of circles to itself. The author defines the Reidemeister coincidence trace in terms of the indices of the coincidence Nielsen classes using a special representative of the homotopy class of the maps. Then the main goal is to show how to compute this trace in terms of the induced homomorphisms by the maps on the fundamental group of the bouquet. More precisely a formula is given in terms of the Fox derivative of the two homomorphisms with respect to the generators of the free group \(\pi_1(X)\). This is Theorem 4.1 which says: Let \(f,g: X \to X\) be maps which induce the homomorphisms \(\phi, \varphi:G \to G\). Then there are lifts \(\tilde f\) and \(\tilde g\) such that \[ RT(f,\tilde f;g, \tilde g)=\rho\left(1- \sum \frac{\partial}{\partial a}\varphi(a)+\varphi(a)\psi(a)^{-1} -\varphi(a)a^{-1}i \left(\frac{\partial}{\partial a}\psi(a)\right)\right). \] As expected, to obtain the Nielsen coincidence number from the trace, the problem to decide when two summands are in the same Nielsen class appears as in the fixed point case. One non trivial example is provided to illustrate the method.