Small values of the Lusternik-Schnirelman category for manifolds (Q945623)

In [Topology 31, No.4, 791-800 (1992; Zbl 0778.55002)], \textit{J. Gómez-Larrañaga} and \textit{F. González-Acuña} showed that the fundamental group of a closed \(3\)-manifold is free, and it is nontrivial if and only if its (normalized) Lusternik-Schnirelmann category, LS category henceforth, is \(2\). They conjectured that the fundamental group of every closed \(n\)-manifold of LS category \(2\) is free, with \(n\geq 3\). In this paper the authors prove this conjecture by showing that a closed connected manifold of LS category \(2\) is either a surface or it has free fundamental group (recall that any closed surface which is not a sphere has LS category \(2\)). Moreover, they show that, for manifolds of LS category \(3\), any finitely presented group can occur as the fundamental group of the given manifold.