Nielsen coincidence numbers, Hopf invariants and spherical space forms (Q2444359)

Given two (continuous) maps between connected smooth manifolds without boundary, the domain manifold being compact, the obstruction to removing their coincidences (via homotopies) can be measured to some extent by the minimum numbers of coincidence points and path-components. In this paper the author introduces an infinite hierarchy of Nielsen coincidence numbers \(N_r\), \(r=0,1,\ldots , \infty\), which are lower bounds for these minimal numbers. Moreover in the setting of fixed point theory these Nielsen numbers \(N_r\) coincide with the classical Nielsen number. However, in general they can be quite distinct: often they get weaker but also more computable as \(r\) increases. The computations use techniques of homotopy theory and all types of Hopf invariants (à la Ganea, Hilton, James). As an illustration the author determines the Nielsen numbers \(N_r\) in the case when the domain and the target manifold of the maps are a sphere and an arbitrary spherical space form, respectively.