Equivariant category of the free part of a \(G\)-manifold and of the sphere of spherical harmonics (Q1373450)

The author investigates the equivariant Lyusternik-Shnirel'man category \(\text{{cat}}_GX\) of a \(G\)-space \(X\), \(G\) a compact Lie group. Most results deal with the case where \(X=SV\) is the unit sphere of a representation \(V\) of \(G\) or where \(X \subset SV\) is an invariant subspace, and various restrictions on the orbit types on \(X\) are satisfied. Lower bounds of \(\text{cat}_GX\) are obtained in terms of \(\dim V\), \(\text{{dim}}(SV \smallsetminus X)\) and the maximal dimension of an orbit on \(X\). The main theorem states that \(\text{cat}_GSV_l \geq (\dim V_l)/4\) for \(G=SO(3)\) and \(V_l\) the \(l\)-th real irreducible representation of \(SO(3)\), \(l\) odd. This should be seen in contrast to results of the reviewer [Topological methods for variational problems with symmetries, Lect. Notes Math. 1560 (1993; Zbl 0789.58001)] that the equivariant genus of \(SO(3)\)-ANRs is bounded and that the quotient \(\text{cat}_GSV/\dim V\) can be arbitrarily small for fixed point free representations \(V\) of \(SO(3)\). The topological results are applied to the bifurcation of (stationary) solutions of a nonlinear Dirichlet problem on the unit ball in \(\mathbb R^3\).