On the stabilization of the topological complexity of graph braid groups

Abstract

We establish a strong, geometric lower bound on the (sequential) topological complexity of the unordered configuration spaces of a general graph. As an application, we show that, for most graphs, the topological complexity eventually stabilizes at its maximal possible value, a direct analogue of a stability phenomenon in the ordered setting first conjectured by Farber. We estimate the stable range in terms of the number of trivalent vertices.

16 pages. To appear in the Journal of Applied and Computational Topology