Eliminating higher-multiplicity intersections. III. Codimension 2 (Q2130509)

A basic result in discrete geometry, known as Tverberg's Theorem [\textit{H. Tverberg}, J. Lond. Math. Soc. 41, 123--128 (1966; Zbl 0131.20002)], says that any \((d+1)(r-1)+1\) points in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) can be partitioned into \(r\) sets such that their convex hulls intersect nontrivially. We abbreviate \(N:=(d+1)(r-1)\). It had been conjectured that this can be generalized to a topological statement, which would mean that for any continuous map \(f:\Delta_N\to\mathbb{R}^d\) there are \(r\) pairwise disjoint faces of \(\Delta_N\) such that their images under \(f\) intersect nontrivially. Here \(\Delta_N\) is the \(N\)-dimensional simplex, and Tverberg's Theorem is the case where \(f\) is affine. However, that conjecture had been refuted by \textit{F. Frick} [``Counterexamples to the topological Tverberg conjecture'', \url{arXiv:1502.00947}] for \(r\) not a prime power and \(d\geq 3r\). His proof employs a result of \textit{I. Mabillard} and \textit{U. Wagner} [in: Proceedings of the 30th annual symposium on computational geometry, SoCG '14, Kyoto, Japan, June 8--11, 2014. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 171--180 (2014; Zbl 1397.57042)] which says that \(\Delta_N\) does not admit an ``almost \(r\)-embedding'' in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) for those parameters. In the present article the authors sharpen the latter result by showing that, for \(r\) not a prime power and \(d\geq 2r+1\), there is an almost \(r\)-embedding of \(\Delta_N\) in \(\mathbb{R}^d\). The proof rests on cohomological obstructions of equivariant maps. Editorial remark: An announcement of the results of this article has been published under the same title in [\textit{S. Ya. Avvakumov} et al., Russ. Math. Surv. 75, No. 6, 1156--1158 (2020; Zbl 1486.57035); translation from Usp. Mat. Nauk 75, No. 6, 173--174 (2020)]. For Part I, see [the second and third author, ``Eliminating Higher-Multiplicity Intersections, I. A Whitney Trick for Tverberg-Type Problems'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1508.02349}]. For Part II, see [the second and third author, LIPIcs -- Leibniz Int. Proc. Inform. 51, Article 51, 12 p. (2016; Zbl 1390.57015)].