Stable systolic category of the product of spheres (Q2431283)

Given a closed manifold \(M\), the stable systolic category of \(M\), \(\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}M\), is a numerical invariant (in the sense of Lusternik-Schnirelmann) which, roughly speaking, measures the volume-complexity of the manifold. The paper begins with an interesting introduction to this invariant in the broader class of local Lipschitz neighborhood retracts in a finite euclidean space. Then, it is proven that, if \(M,N\) are manifolds of maximal real cup-length (this means in particular that their real cup-length equals their stable systolic category), then \(\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}(M\times N)\geq \text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}M+\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}N\). On the other hand, without imposing maximal real cup-length, under a certain assumption on \(M\) and \(N\) involving their dimensions and the least positive degree in which they have non zero real cohomology, the author proves that \(\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}(M\times N)= \text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}M+\text{cat}_{\text{stsys}}N\). These results allow the author to prove the main result by which the stable systolic category of a product of spheres equals the number of the spheres involved.