Maps of degree one, LS category and higher topological complexities (Q6044496)

The purpose of this paper is to study the LS category of a space and the sectional category of the fibration \(p : E\to B\). The sectional category of \(p\) is the minimum cardinality (minus one) of an open covering of \(B\) such that on every open set in the covering there is a section of \(p\). As a special case, the sectional category of the path fibration on \(X\) is the LS category of \(X\) and the sectional category of the free path fibration on \(X\) is the topological complexity of \(X\). In the first section, the authors study the relation between the LS category and the topological complexity of two closed oriented manifolds connected by a degree one map. The second section is devoted to answering the following open problem: Given two closed connected orientable manifolds \(M\) and \(N\), suppose there exists a map \(f : M\to N\) of degree \(\pm1\). Is it true that the LS category of \(M\) is greater than the LS category of \(N\)? In Section 3 a similar question is asked for topological complexity. Many results illustrate how the topological complexity of \(X\) is related to some topological invariants.