Topological Tverberg theorems for products of polytopes

Abstract

The topological Tverberg theorem asserts that if $r$ is a prime power then for any continuous map $f\colon \Delta_{(r-1)(d+1)}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^d$ from the $(r-1)(d+1)$-dimensional simplex $\Delta_{(r-1)(d+1)}$ to $\mathbb{R}^d$ there exist $r$ pairwise disjoint faces of the simplex whose images have non-empty $r$-fold intersection. By refinement, the same conclusion holds if the simplex is replaced by any polytope of the same dimension. While this dimension is tight for simplices, recent work of Sober\'on and Zerbib shows that this need not be true for polytopes in general. Here we give topological Tverberg theorems for products of simplices. Each of these improves upon the $(r-1)(d+1)$-dimensional threshold, even while imposing the structural condition that the ``Tverberg faces'' of the product are themselves the products of pairwise disjoint faces from each simplex factor. As before, refinement extends these results, and in particular their dimensional improvements, to products of arbitrary polytopes. As an example, if $d+1$ is a power of two then whenever $m\geq n\geq d+1$ and $m+n=3d+2$ we show that any continuous map $f\colon \Delta_m\times \Delta_n\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^d$ admits disjoint faces $\sigma_1,\sigma_2$ of $\Delta_m$ and $\tau_1,\tau_2$ of $\Delta_n$ such that $\cap_{i,j\in[2]} f(\sigma_i\times\tau_j)\neq \emptyset$. In the case of multilinear maps, our results imply partitions of grid-indexed point sets in $\mathbb{R}^d$ by specialized subsets with stronger intersection conclusions than given by Tverberg's original theorem. Lastly, we extend our results to van Kampen--Flores type theorems which impose dimensional restrictions on the faces of each product factor.