Sectional category of the Ganea fibrations and higher relative category (Q523596)

Summary: We first compute James' sectional category (secat) of the Ganea map \(g_k\) of any map \(\iota_X\) in terms of the sectional category of \(\iota_X\): we show that secat \(g_k\) is the integer part of secat \(\iota_X /(k + 1)\). Next we compute the relative category (relcat) of \(g_k\). In order to do this, we introduce the relative category of order \(k\) (\(\mathrm{relcat}_k\)) of a map and show that relcat \(g_k\) is the integer part of \(\mathrm{relcat}_k \iota_X /(k + 1)\). Then we establish some inequalities linking secat and relcat of any order: we show that \(\mathrm{secat}\;\iota_X \leqslant \mathrm{relcat}_k \iota_X \leqslant \mathrm{secat}\;\iota_X + k + 1\) and \(\mathrm{relcat}_k \iota_X \leqslant \mathrm{relcat}_{k + 1} \iota_X \leqslant \mathrm{relcat}_k \iota_X + 1\). We give examples that show that these inequalities may be strict.