Topological complexity of n points on a tree

Steven Scheirer

Published 2016-07-27Version 1

The topological complexity of a path-connected space $X,$ denoted $TC(X),$ can be thought of as the minimum number of continuous rules needed to describe how to move from one point in $X$ to another. The space $X$ is often interpreted as a configuration space in some real-life context. Here, we consider the case where $X$ is the space of configurations of $n$ points on a tree $\Gamma.$ We will be interested in two such configuration spaces. In the, first, denoted $C^n(\Gamma),$ the points are distinguishable, while in the second, $UC^n(\Gamma),$ the points are indistinguishable. We determine $TC(C^n(\Gamma))$ and $TC(UC^n(\Gamma))$ for any tree $\Gamma$ (provided the configuration spaces are path-connected) and many values of $n.$