Homotopically non-trivial maps with small k-dilation

Abstract

We construct homotopically non-trivial maps from S^m to S^n with arbitrarily small 3-dilation for certain pairs (m,n). The simplest example is m=4, n=3. Other examples include arbitrarily large values of m and n. We show that a homotopy class in pi_7(S^4) can be represented by maps with arbitrarily small 4-dilation if and only if the class is torsion.