On distributional one-category, diagonal distributional complexity, and related invariants

Abstract

We develop the theory of probabilistic variants of the one-category and diagonal topological complexity, which bound the classical LS-category and topological complexity from below. Unlike any other classical or probabilistic invariants, these invariants are rigid on spaces with finite fundamental group. On Eilenberg-Mac Lane spaces, we identify these new invariants with distributional category and complexity, respectively, and use them to illuminate aspects of the behavior of the latter invariants on aspherical spaces and products of spaces. We also study their properties on covering maps, $\pi_1$-isomorphisms, $H$-spaces, and closed essential manifolds, and consequently, obtain the first examples of closed manifolds beyond the real projective spaces on which the distributional theory disagrees with the classical one.