The Borsuk-Ulam property for homotopy classes of selfmaps of surfaces of Euler characteristic zero

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Borsuk-Ulam property for homotopy classes of selfmaps on surfaces with Euler characteristic zero, classifying which classes have this property based on involutions and fundamental group actions.

Contribution

It characterizes the Borsuk-Ulam property for homotopy classes of maps on the torus and Klein bottle, linking it to involution types and fundamental group homomorphisms.

Findings

No homotopy class on T^2 has the property with orientation-preserving involutions.

Classifies homotopy classes with the property under orientation-reversing involutions on T^2.

A homotopy class on K^2 has the property if and only if it lifts to the torus.

Abstract

Let M and N be topological spaces such that M admits a free involution $\\tau$. A homotopy class $\beta$ $\in$ [M, N ] is said to have the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\\tau$ if for every representative map f : M $\rightarrow$ N of $\beta$, there exists a point x $\in$ M such that f ($\\tau$ (x)) = f (x). In the case where M is a compact, connected manifold without boundary and N is a compact, connected surface without boundary different from the 2-sphere and the real projective plane, we formulate this property in terms of the pure and full 2-string braid groups of N , and of the fundamental groups of M and the orbit space of M with respect to the action of $\\tau$. If M = N is either the 2-torus T^2 or the Klein bottle K^2 , we then solve the problem of deciding which homotopy classes of [M, M ] have the Borsuk-Ulam property. First, if $\\tau$ : T^2 $\rightarrow$ T^2 is a free involution that preserves orientation, we show that no homotopy class of [T^2 , T^2 ] has the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\\tau$. Secondly, we prove that up to a certain equivalence relation, there is only one class of free involutions $\\tau$ : T^2 $\rightarrow$ T^2 that reverse orientation, and for such involutions, we classify the homotopy classes in [T^2 , T^2 ] that have the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\\tau$ in terms of the induced homomorphism on the fundamental group. Finally, we show that if $\\tau$ : K^2 $\rightarrow$ K^2 is a free involution, then a homotopy class of [K^2 , K^2 ] has the Borsuk-Ulam property with respect to $\\tau$ if and only if the given homotopy class lifts to the torus.