On the stabilization of the topological complexity of graph braid groups

Abstract

We establish the first nontrivial lower bound on the (higher) 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.