Amenable category and complexity (Q2172197)

This article is concerned with various notions of category of a topological space: for a class of groups \(\mathcal{G}\) closed under isomorphism, quotients and subgroups, the \(\mathcal{G}\)-category \(\mathrm{cat}_{\mathcal{G}}(X)\) of \(X\) is the smallest integer \(k\) such that there exists an open cover \(U_1,\ldots,U_k\) such that the image of the map \(\pi_1(U_i) \to \pi_1(X)\) induced by the inclusion lies in \(\mathcal{G}\) for every choice of basepoint and all \(i\). Typical choices of \(\mathcal{G}\) are the class of all trivial groups or the class of amenable groups; in the latter case, the \(\mathcal{G}\)-category of \(X\) is also called its amenable category. The authors prove various results describing the possible values of these categories as well as their relation to topological complexity. The first main result asserts that every finitely presented group arises as the fundamental group of an oriented, closed and connected manifold of dimension \(\geq 4\) and with amenable category at most \(3\) and characterises the class of groups which arise as the fundamental group of such a manifold with amenable category \(2\). They go on to discuss various positive results concerning the monotonicity problem, which asks whether the existence of a degree \(\pm 1\) map \(M \to N\) between oriented, closed and connected manifolds implies that \(\mathrm{cat}_{\mathcal{G}}(M) \geq \mathrm{cat}_{\mathcal{G}}(N)\). The remainder of the article establishes upper bounds on the \(\mathcal{G}\)-category. First, the authors show that, for \(\mathcal{F}\) a family of subgroups of the fundamental group of a connected CW-complex \(X\), the \(\mathcal{G}\)-category agrees with the smallest integer \(k\) such that the universal map \(\widetilde{X} \to E_\mathcal{F}\pi_1(X)\) from its universal cover to the classifying space with \(\mathcal{F}\)-isotropy factors up to \(\pi_1(X)\)-homotopy through the \((k+1)\)-skeleton of \(E_\mathcal{F}\pi_1(X)\). Finally, they prove sufficient criteria under which the topological complexity of a space \(X\) is bounded below by the amenable category of \(X \times X\): this holds if the fundamental group of \(X\) is amenable, if \(X\) is a manifold whose fundamental group arises from a graph of amenable groups, or if \(X\) is the classifying space of a group satisfying strong finiteness conditions. The tools used in the proofs include Bass-Serre-theory, bounded cohomology and simplicial volume.