Dold's theorem from viewpoint of strong compatibility graphs

Let G be a non-trivial finite group. The well-known Dold's theorem states that: There is no continuous G-equivariant map from an n-connected simplicial G-complex to a free simplicial G-complex of dimension at most n. In this paper, we give a new generalization of Dold's theorem, by replacing “dimension at most n” with a sharper combinatorial parameter. Indeed, this parameter is the chromatic number of a new family of graphs, called strong compatibility graphs, associated to the target space. Moreover, in a series of examples, we will see that one can hope to infer much more information from this generalization than ordinary Dold's theorem. In particular, we show that this new parameter is significantly better than the dimension of target space “for almost all free Z₂-simplicial complex.” Finally, as another application of strong compatibility graphs, some new results on the limitations of topological methods for determining the chromatic number of graphs will be presented.