Monoids of self-maps of topological spherical space forms (Q2240607)

Given a pointed space \(X\), the set of pointed homotopy classes of pointed self-maps of \(X\) is a monoid under the composition of maps. Moreover, this monoid, denoted \(\mathcal{M}(X)\) in this work, has a zero element represented by the homotopy class of the constant map. Calculating \(\mathcal{M}(X)\) for a given space \(X\) is frequently shown to be a difficult task, and very few examples of those calculations are found in the literature. In this work, the authors consider the case of \(X\) being a topological spherical space form. Recall that \(X\) is a topological spherical space form if \(X\) can be described as a quotient \(S^n/G\) where \(G\) is a finite group acting freely on \(S^n\), the \(n\)-dimensional sphere. Notice that if \(n\) is an even number, then \(G\) is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{Z}/2\) and \(X\) is homotopy equivalent to \(\mathbb{R}P^n\), the \(n\)-dimensional real projective space. The main results here (Theorems 1.1 and 1.3) fully describe the monoid \(\mathcal{M}(X)\) for \(X=S^n/G\) in terms of the dimension \(n\) and the algebraic structure of \(\operatorname{End}(G)\), the monoid of group endomorphisms of \(G\). The arguments given are quite different depending on the parity of \(n\): while the odd dimensional case follows from a Hopf degree theorem for topological spherical space forms (Lemma 2.2) and a realization result (Lemma 3.2), the case of even dimensional real projective spaces requires a more elaborated argument since \(\mathcal{M}(\mathbb{R}P^{2r})\) is not a natural submonoid of the multiplicative monoid \(\mathbb{Z}\) (Section 4). Finally, the group of pointed homotopy classes of pointed self-homotopy equivalences of \(X\), denoted \(\mathcal{E}(X)\), consists of the invertible elements of \(\mathcal{M}(X)\). Therefore the results above allow the authors to fully describe the group \(\mathcal{E}(X)\) for \(X\) being a topological spherical space form.