Intertwining category and complexity

Abstract

We develop the theory of the intertwining distributional versions of the LS-category and the sequential topological complexities of a space $X$, denoted by $i\mathsf{cat}(X)$ and $i\mathsf{TC}_m(X)$, respectively. We prove that they satisfy most of the nice properties as their respective distributional counterparts $d\mathsf{cat}(X)$ and $d\mathsf{TC}_m(X)$, and their classical counterparts $\mathsf{cat}(X)$ and $\mathsf{TC}_m(X)$, such as homotopy invariance and special behavior on topological groups. We show that the notions of $i\mathsf{TC}_m$ and $d\mathsf{TC}_m$ are different for each $m \ge 2$ by proving that $i\mathsf{TC}_m(\mathcal{H})=1$ for all $m \ge 2$ for Higman's group $\mathcal{H}$. Using cohomological lower bounds, we also provide various examples of locally finite CW complexes $X$ for which $i\mathsf{cat}(X) > 1$, $i\mathsf{TC}_m(X) > 1$, $i\mathsf{cat}(X) = d\mathsf{cat}(X) = \mathsf{cat}(X)$, and $i\mathsf{TC}(X) = d\mathsf{TC}(X) = \mathsf{TC}(X)$.