scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1943929

This paper is a review of the basic definitions and properties of Lusternik-Schnirelmann category (or simply LS-category for short) by one of the main contributors to the area in its important developmental phase in the 1950--1960's. LS-category first appeared in a paper of Lusternik and Schnirelmann in the thirties, but it was only with the work of \textit{R. H. Fox} [Ann. Math. (2) 42, 333--370 (1941; Zbl 0027.43104)] that algebraic topology became prominent in the subject. In this survey, the author recalls the framework at the beginning of the notion and then explores Whitehead's alternative presentation which created a ``surge of interest in LS-category among homotopy theorists in the 1960's. After preliminaries, he discusses the first open question which received widespread attention in the homotopical world: whether all spaces with LS-category less than or equal to 2 are suspensions or not (in the paper under review the LS-category of a point is 1). With Whitehead's definition, a space of LS-category \(n\) looks like a space that can be equipped with a special operation \(\sigma_X: X\to T^n(X)\) given by a compression of the diagonal into the fat wedge. A map \(f: X\to Y\) between two spaces of LS-category \(n\), equipped respectively with \(\sigma_X\) and \(\sigma_Y\), is called a homomorphism if the following diagram homotopy commutes: \[ \begin{tikzcd} X \ar[r,"f"]\ar[d,"\sigma_X" '] & Y\ar[d,"\sigma_Y"]\\ T^n(X)\ar[r,"T^n(f)" '] &T^n(Y) \,. \end{tikzcd} \] The author proves that this property of the map \(f\) implies that the LS-category of the homotopy cofibre is less than or equal to \(n\) also (He, in fact, gives a proof for a more general notion called quasi-homomorphism). Examples of non-suspensions of LS-category 2 are then obtained by taking homomorphisms of spheres that are not suspensions. This was, in fact, the result of the author's own collaboration with I. Berstein in the 1960's. The paper is also concerned with lower bounds (such as cup-length of the algebra of cohomology and weak category) and upper bounds (such as cone length) for LS-category. The last section is devoted to the dual notion (in the sense of Eckmann-Hilton) of co-category coming from T. Ganea's approach to LS-category. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1005.00038].

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