The Schwarz genus of the Stiefel manifold (Q386847)

Let \(G\) be a finite group and \(X\) be a free \(G\)-space. The Schwarz genus, \(g_{G}(X)\), of \(X\) is the smallest number \(n\) such that \(X\) can be covered by \(n\) open \(G\)-invariant subsets, \(X_{1},\ldots, X_{n}\), with the property that there exists a \(G\)-equivariant map \(X_{i}\to G\), for any \(i\). This is a lower bound of the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of the quotient \(X/G\), \({\mathrm cat} (X/G)\), with the convention \({\mathrm cat} (\{*\})=1\). In the paper under review, the authors determine the Schwarz genus of the Stiefel manifold \(V_{k}({\mathbb R}^n)\), equipped with the action of the Weyl group, \(W_{k}=({\mathbb Z}/2)^k\rtimes \Sigma_{k}\), by \(g_{W_{k}}(V_{k}({\mathbb R}^n))={\mathrm cat}(V_{k}({\mathbb R}^n)/W_{k})=1+\dim V_{k}({\mathbb R}^n)\). Furthermore, they give also an estimate of the number of critically outscribed parallelotopes around a strict convex body, and Birkhoff-James orthogonal bases of a normed finite dimensional vector space.