Some asymptotic formulae for torsion in homotopy groups

Abstract

Inspired by a remarkable work of Félix, Halperin, and Thomas on the asymptotic estimation of the ranks of rational homotopy groups, and more recent works of Wu and the authors on local hyperbolicity, we prove two asymptotic formulae for torsion rank of homotopy groups, one using ordinary homology and one using K-theory. We use these to obtain explicit quantitative asymptotic lower bounds on the torsion rank of the homotopy groups for many interesting spaces after suspension, including Moore spaces, Eilenberg–MacLane spaces, complex projective spaces, complex Grassmannians, Milnor hypersurfaces, and unitary groups.