The Borsuk-Ulam property for homotopy classes of self-maps of surfaces of Euler characteristic zero (Q2003716)

Let $M$ and $N$ be topological spaces such that $M$ admits a free involution $\tau$ and let $[M, N]$ be the set of homotopy classes of maps from $M$ to $N$. A homotopy class $\beta \in [M,N]$ is said to have the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\tau$ if for every representative map $f : M \to N$ of the homotopy class $\beta$, there exists a point $x \in M$ such that $f(\tau (x)) = f(x)$. The main idea of the paper under review is to formulate this property in terms of the pure and full 2-string braid groups of $N$, and the fundamental groups of $M$ and $M/\tau$ provided that $M$ is a compact, connected manifold without boundary and $N$ is a compact, connected surface without boundary different from the 2-sphere and the real projective plane. If $M = N$ is either the 2-torus $\mathbb{T}^2$ or the Klein bottle $\mathbb{K}^2$, the authors solve the problem of deciding which homotopy classes in $[M,M]$ have the Borsuk-Ulam property. Among other interesting obervations, the main results of the paper are the following: Theorem 1. Let $\tau$ be an orientation preserving free involution on $\mathbb{T}^2$. If $\beta \in [\mathbb{T}^2,\mathbb{T}^2]$ is a homotopy class, then $\beta$ does not have the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\tau$. Theorem 3. Let $\tau$ be a free involution on $\mathbb{K}^2$. Then a homotopy class $\beta \in [\mathbb{K}^2, \mathbb{K}^2]$ has the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\tau$ if and only if $\beta$ lifts to the torus.