Up-to-one approximations of sectional category and topological complexity (Q1944348)

The paper under review places I. M. James' sectional category and M. Farber's topological complexity in a unified framework. In general, all results in this paper hold in a closed model category satisfying a cube axiom. The authors introduce Lusternik-Schnirelmann type invariants such as the strong pushout category and string relative category of a map. There are many results relating these invariants to each other with respect to standard homotopy constructions, as well as their relations to the classical topological invariants \(\mathrm{cat}\), \(\mathrm{Cat}\), and \(\mathrm{sect}\). Applications to topological complexity are given. In particular, the authors show that the so-called string complexity of a suspension is at most \(2\). The paper contains an appendix proving cube and pushout type theorems needed in the paper.