Some remarks on Massey products, tied cohomology classes, and the Lusternik-Shnirelman category (Q679044)

Let \(X\) be a Hilbert manifold and \(F(X)\) be the minimal number of critical points for a function \(f\) on \(X\). The author introduces the notion of tied cohomology classes and uses it to improve the cup length \(c\ell(X)\) into a tie length \(T\ell(x)\), a lower bound for \(F(X)\). To be more precise, let \(X^a= \{x\in X\mid f(x)\leq a\}\), let \(\alpha\in H^x(X^b,X^a)-\{0\}\), and set \(c(d,f)= \inf\{\lambda\mid\alpha\neq 0\) in \(H^*(X^\lambda,X^a)\}\). Then \(c(d,f)\) is a critical value of \(f\). If \(\beta\in p^*(X)\), and \(\alpha,\beta\neq 0\) in \(H^*(X^b,X^a)\), then \(c(\alpha\cdot\beta,f)\geq c(\alpha,f)\). Let \(\alpha\), \(\beta\) be cohomology classes. The class \(\beta\) is weakly tied to \(\alpha\) if \(c(\beta,f)\geq c(\alpha,f)\) and is strongly tied to \(\alpha\) if either \(c(\beta,f)> c(\alpha,f)\) or else \(c(\beta,f)= c(\alpha,f)=c\) and \(\widetilde H^*(k_c)\neq 0\). The tie length, \(T\ell(X)\), is the maximum integer \(k\) such that there is a sequence of cohomology classes \(\alpha_1,\beta_1,\alpha_2,\beta_2,\dots,\beta_{k-1},\alpha_k\) such that \(\beta_j\) is weakly tied to \(\alpha\), and \(\alpha_{j+1}\) strongly tied to \(\beta_j\). We then have: \(c\ell(X)\leq T\ell(X)\leq F(X)\). The author gives interesting applications, in particular for free loop spaces.