Relative category and monoidal topological complexity

Abstract

If a map f has a homotopy retraction, then Doeraene and El Haouari conjectured that the sectional category and the relative category of f are the same. In this work we discuss this conjecture for some lower bounds of these invariants. In particular, when we consider the diagonal map, we obtain results supporting Iwase-Sakai’s conjecture which asserts that the topological complexity is the monoidal topological complexity.