Singularities, expanders and topology of maps. I: Homology versus volume in the spaces of cycles (Q1047127)

This very interesting paper is devoted to finding lower bounds on the topological complexity of the critical values set \(\Sigma (F)\subset Y\) of generic smooth maps \(F:X\rightarrow Y\), as well as on the complexity of the fibers \(F^{-1}(y)\subset X\) in terms of the topology of the manifolds \(X\) and \(Y\). The paper is organized into six sections as follows: 1. Corollaries and Background; 2. Homological Lower Bounds on \(\Sigma (F)\) and the Fibers of Maps \(F\); 3. Lower Bounds on the Fold Maximal Self-Crossing Number \(N_m\) by Simplicial Volume; 4. p.l.- Families of Point/Edge Singular Surfaces and Minimal Maps; 5. Morse Spectra in the Spaces of Cycles and the Lower Bounds on min-area; 6. Isoperimetry and the Spectrum. We mention here only two results presented in the paper. Let \(F:X \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2\) be a generic (\(C^{\infty}\)-stable) smooth map, such that the restriction of \(F\) to the (\(1\)-dimensional) singularity \(\widehat{\Sigma}\subset X\) of \(F\) is an immersion. Then the number \(N_2 =N_2 (\Sigma)\) of the self-crossings (double points) of the critical set \(\Sigma =\Sigma(F)= F(\widehat{\Sigma})\subset \mathbb{R}^2\) satisfies the inequality \[ N_2 (\Sigma)\geq \tfrac{1}{2}|H_{*}(X)|_{\mathbb{F}} -N_{\text{comp}}(\Sigma), \] where \(N_{\text{comp}}(\Sigma)\) denotes the number of connected components of \(\Sigma \subset \mathbb{R}^2\) (Section 2.1). The main result of Section 2.2 is the following: If \(X\) is the Cartesian product of two connected manifolds, \(X=X_{1}\times X_{2}\), and \(F:X \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2\) is a generic smooth map, then the depth of the critical set \(\Sigma \subset \mathbb{R}^2\) of \(F\) satisfies \[ \text{dep}(\Sigma)\geq \tfrac{1}{6}\min(|H_{*}(X_1 )|_{\mathbb{F}},|H_{*}(X_2 )|_{\mathbb{F}}). \] The number dep\((\Sigma)\) is defined in subsection 1.2. The paper also contains many open questions and an useful bibliography consisting of \(53\) relevant references for the topic.