Lusternik-Schnirelmann category of the configuration space of complex projective space

Abstract

The Lusternik-Schnirelmann category $cat(X)$ is a homotopy invariant which is a numerical bound on the number of critical points of a smooth function on a manifold. Another similar invariant is the topological complexity $TC(X)$ (a la Farber) which has interesting applications in Robotics, specifically, in the robot motion planning problem. In this paper we calculate the Lusternik-Schnirelmann category and as a consequence we calculate the topological complexity of the two-point ordered configuration space of $\mathbb{CP}^n$ for every $n\geq 1$.