New lower bounds for the topological complexity of aspherical spaces (Q2344327)

The topological complexity \(\text{TC}(X)\) of a space \(X\) is the sectional category (or Schwarz genus) of the free path fibration \(\pi _X:X^I\rightarrow X\times X\), \(\pi _X(\alpha )=(\alpha (0),\alpha (1)).\) This numerical homotopy invariant was introduced by \textit{M. Farber} in [Discrete Comput. Geom. 29 No.2, 211-221 (2003; Zbl 1038.68130)] in order to give a topological approach to the motion planning problem in robotics. In the paper under review, the authors deal with the following interesting open problem posed by Farber: for any discrete group \(G\), give a description of \(\text{TC}(G):=\text{TC}(K(G,1))\) in terms of the algebraic properties of \(G\) (here, \(K(G,1)\) denotes the Eilenberg-MacLane space). Their main result is the following theorem: {Theorem}. Let \(G\) be a discrete group, and let \(A\) and \(B\) be subgroups of \(G.\) If \((gAg^{-1})\cap B=\{1\},\) then \(\text{TC}(G)\geq \text{cd}(A\times B)\), i.e. the cohomological dimension of the group \(A\times B\) is a lower bound of \(\text{TC}(G).\) The authors also present several illustrative examples where their theorem can be successfully applied. Concretely, for right-angled Artin groups, pure braid groups and the fundamental group of the Borromean rings link complement they recover the lower bounds obtained by other techniques. Finally, using this theorem they show that the topological complexity of Higman's group \(\mathcal{H}\) is 4. Such a computation could not be obtained using the standard techniques of zero-divisors cup-length or sectional category weight as it is difficult to distinguish the group \(\mathcal{H}\) from a trivial group using cohomological invariants.