Obstruction theory and coincidences of maps between nilmanifolds (Q2484042)

The authors consider the coincidence set of maps \(f, g\colon M^m\to N^n\) between two compact Nilmanifolds. A global obstruction \(o_n(f,g)\) to deforming \(f\) and \(g\) to be coincidence free on the \(n\)-skeleton of \(M\) is illustrated, where \(n\) is the dimension of the target manifold. In some sense, it is stronger than the Nielsen coincidence number \(N(f,g)\) in detecting coincidences in the \(n\)-skeleton, because \(N(f,g)>0\) implies that \(o_n(f,g)\) is non-trivial. The main result of this paper is a relation between the Reidemeister coincidence number \(R(f,g)\) and the Nielsen coincidence number \(N(f,g)\) for such \(f\) and \(g\): either \(N(f,g)=0\) or \(N(f,g)=R(f,g)\). This implies that the essentialities of all coincidence classes are homogeneous. Such a result generalizes many results in fixed point theory and coincidence theory in this direction. It should be highlighted that in this paper, the dimension of the domain manifold \(M\) may be larger than that of the target manifold \(N\).