Integration in \v{C}ech theories and a bound on entropy

Abstract

The evaluation of Alexander-Spanier cochains over formal simplices in a topological space leads to a notion of integration of Alexander-Spanier cohomology classes over \v{C}ech homology classes. The integral defines an explicit and non-degenerate pairing between the Alexander-Spanier cohomology and the \v{C}ech homology. Instead of working on the limits that define both groups, most of the discussion is carried out "at scale $\mathcal U$", for an open covering $\mathcal U$. As an application, we generalize a result of Manning to arbitrary compact spaces $X$: we prove that the topological entropy of $f \colon X \to X$ is bounded from below by the logarithm of the spectral radius of the map induced in the first \v{C}ech cohomology group.