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On the conjecture of Kevin Walker
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Farber, Michael, Hausmann, Jean-Claude and Schutz, Dirk (2009) On the conjecture of Kevin Walker. Journal of Topology and Analysis, Vol.1 (No.1). pp. 65-86. doi:10.1142/S1793525309000023 ISSN 1793-5253.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S1793525309000023
Abstract
In 1985 Kevin Walker in his study of topology of polygon spaces [15] raised an interesting conjecture in the spirit of the well-known question "Can you hear the shape of a drum?" of Marc Kac. Roughly, Walker's conjecture asks if one can recover relative lengths of the bars of a linkage from intrinsic algebraic properties of the cohomology algebra of its configuration space. In this paper we prove that the conjecture is true for polygon spaces in R3. We also prove that for planar polygon spaces the conjecture holds in several modified forms: (a) if one takes into account the action of a natural involution on cohomology, (b) if the cohomology algebra of the involution's orbit space is known, or (c) if the length vector is normal. Some of our results allow the length vector to be non-generic, the corresponding polygon spaces have singularities. Our main tool is the study of the natural involution and its action on cohomology. A crucial role in our proof plays the solution of the isomorphism problem for monoidal rings due to Gubeladze.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics | ||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Mathematics | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Topology and Analysis | ||||
| Publisher: | World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. | ||||
| ISSN: | 1793-5253 | ||||
| Official Date: | March 2009 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Vol.1 | ||||
| Number: | No.1 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 65-86 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1142/S1793525309000023 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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