We reconceptualize the process of forming $n$-excisive approximations to $\infty$-categories, in the sense of Heuts, as inverting the suspension functor lifted to $A_n$-cogroup objects. We characterize $n$-excisive $\infty$-categories as those $\infty$-categories in which $A_n$-cogroup objects admit desuspensions. Applying this result to pointed spaces we reprove a theorem of Klein-Schwänzl-Vogt: every 2-connected cogroup-like $A_\infty$-space admits a desuspension.
In this note we compare the fracture squares from genuine equivariant stable homotopy theory and the fracture squares which appear in the Goodwillie tower for the norm functor.
We introduce general methods to analyse the Goodwillie tower of the identity functor on a wedge $X \vee Y$ of spaces (using the Hilton-Milnor theorem) and on the cofibre $\mathrm{cof}(f)$ of a map $f: X \rightarrow Y$. We deduce some consequences for $v_n$-periodic homotopy groups: whereas the Goodwillie tower is finite and converges in periodic homotopy when evaluated on spheres (Arone-Mahowald), we show that neither of these statements remains true for wedges and Moore spaces.
We analyze the homological behavior of the attaching maps in the 2-local Goodwillie tower of the identity evaluated at S^1. We show that they exhibit the same homological behavior as the James-Hopf maps used by N. Kuhn to prove the 2-primary Whitehead conjecture. We use this to prove a calculus form of the Whitehead conjecture: the Whitehead sequence is a contracting homotopy for the Goodwillie tower of S^1 at the prime 2.
This paper is based on talks I gave in Nagoya and Kinosaki in August of 2003. I survey, from my own perspective, Goodwillie's work on towers associated to continuous functors between topological model categories, and then include a discussion of applications to periodic homotopy as in my work and the work of Arone-Mahowald.
We call attention to the intermediate constructions $\T_n F$ in Goodwillie's Calculus of homotopy functors, giving a new model which naturally gives rise to a family of towers filtering the Taylor Tower of a functor. We also establish a surprising equivalence between the homotopy inverse limits of these towers and the homotopy inverse limits of certain cosimplicial resolutions. This equivalence gives a greatly simplified construction for the homotopy inverse limit of the Taylor tower of a functor $F$ under general assumptions.
We study the interaction between the EHP sequence and the Goodwillie tower of the identity evaluated at spheres at the prime 2. Both give rise to spectral sequences (the EHP spectral sequence and the Goodwillie spectral sequence, respectively) which compute the unstable homotopy groups of spheres. We relate the Goodwillie filtration to the P map, and the Goodwillie differentials to the H map. Furthermore, we study an iterated Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence approach to the homotopy of the layers of the Goodwillie tower of the identity on spheres. We show that differentials in these spectra…
We prove a strengthened version of a theorem of Lionel Schwartz that says that certain modules over the Steenrod algebra cannot be the mod 2 cohomology of a space. What is most interesting is our method, which replaces his iterated use of the Eilenberg--Moore spectral sequence by a single use of the spectral sequence converging to the mod 2 cohomology of Omega^nX obtained from the Goodwillie tower for the suspension spectrum of Omega^nX. Much of the paper develops basic properties of this spectral sequence.
Manfred Stelzer has pointed out that part of Corollary 4.5 of our paper "Topological nonrealization results via the Goodwillie tower approach to iterated loopspace homology" [Alg. Geo. Top. 8 (2008), 2109--2129] was not sufficiently proved, and, indeed, is likely incorrect as stated. This necessitates a little more argument to finish the proof of the main theorem of the original paper. The statement of this theorem, and all the examples, remain unchanged.
The spectral sequence associated to the Arone-Goodwillie tower for the n-fold loop space functor is used to show that the first two non-trivial layers of the nilpotent filtration of the reduced mod 2 cohomology of a (sufficiently connected) space with nilpotent cohomology are comparable. This relies upon the theory of unstable modules over the mod 2 Steenrod algebra, together with properties of a generalized class of almost unstable modules which is introduced here. An essential ingredient of the proof is a non-vanishing result for certain extension groups in the category of unstable modules l…
We define an ``algebraic'' version of the Goodwillie tower, P_n^alg F(X), that depends only on the behavior of F on coproducts of X. When F is a functor to connected spaces or grouplike H-spaces, the functor P_n^alg F is the base of a fibration whose fiber is the simplicial space associated to a cotriple built from the (n+1) cross effect of the functor F. When the connectivity of X is large enough (for example, when F is the identity functor and X is connected), the algebraic Goodwillie tower agrees with the ordinary (topological) Goodwillie tower, so this theory gives a way of studying the Go…
Let K(n) be the nth Morava K--theory at a prime p. This paper is a thorough study of questions like the following: to what extent does the K(n)--localization, or the K(n)--homology, of a spectrum X determine the K(n)--homology of its 0th space X_0? Our methods combine techniques from modern homotopical algebra with chromatic homotopy. In particular, we use the telescopic functors of Bousfield and the author (dependent on the Nilpotence Theorem of Devanitz, Hopkins, and Smith), as wel as Topological Andre--Quillen Homology and Goodwillie calculus in nonconnective settings.
As a first goal, it is explained why Goodwillie-Weiss calculus of embeddings offers new information about the Euclidean embedding dimension of P^m only for m < 16. Concrete scenarios are described in these low-dimensional cases, pinpointing where to look for potential, but critical, high-order obstructions in the corresponding Taylor towers. For m > 15, the relation TC^S(P^m) > n-1 is translated into the triviality of a certain cohomotopy Euler class which, in turn, becomes the only Taylor obstruction to producing an n-dimensional Euclidean embedding of P^m. A speculative bordism-type form of …
We construct a Goodwillie tower of categories which interpolates between the category of pointed spaces and the category of spectra. This tower of categories refines the Goodwillie tower of the identity functor in a precise sense. More generally, we construct such a tower for a large class of infinity-categories C. We classify such Goodwillie towers in terms of the derivatives of the identity functor of C. As a particular application we show how this provides a model for the homotopy theory of simply-connected spaces in terms of coalgebras with Tate diagonals. Our classification of Goodwillie …
We show Goodwillie's calculus of functors and $n$-geometric $D^{-}$-stacks share similar features by starting to focus on the convergence of Taylor towers for homotopy functors and the fact that $\mathbb{R} F(A) \cong \text{holim} \mathbb{R} F(A_{\leq n})$ for geometric stacks, where $\{ A_{\leq n} \}$ provides a Postnikov tower of some given $A \in s \text{k-Alg}$. From there we show parallel results, such as similar homotopy fibers of connecting maps in towers, as well as polynomial approximations, pointwise approximations and reconstruction theorems for towers.
Goodwillie's homotopy functor calculus constructs a Taylor tower of approximations to F, often a functor from spaces to spaces. Weiss's orthogonal calculus provides a Taylor tower for functors from vector spaces to spaces. In particular, there is a Weiss tower associated to the functor which sends a vector space V to F evaluated at the one-point compactification of V. In this paper, we give a comparison of these two towers and show that when F is analytic the towers agree up to weak equivalence. We include two main applications, one of which gives as a corollary the convergence of the Weiss Ta…
In this paper we recover Bousfield's computation of $ν_1$-periodic homotopy groups of simply connected, finite $H$-spaces from \cite{Bou99} using the techniques of Goodwillie calculus. This is done through first computing André-Quillen cohomology over the monad $\mathbb{T}$ that encodes the power operations of complex $K$-theory. Then lifting this computation to computing $K$-theory of topological André-Quillen cohomology, and then using results of Behrens and Rezk relating it back to the Bousfield-Kuhn functor. The fact that we recovers the result of Bousfield allows us to conclude $ν_1$-peri…
The Goodwillie tower is based on the idea of approximating a functor F by a series of functors satisfying the strong property of "n-excision". In this dissertation, we study a weaker property of "n-additivity" and compare the two. Theorem 9.1, one of the main results in this dissertation, establishes that if $F$ is reasonably good, there is a fibration sequence with the fiber being the realization of a simplicial space built from a cotriple made of iterated cross effects and base space the "discrete" degree $n$ additive approximation to $F$. We also relate the construction given to Goodwillie'…
Goodwillie's calculus of homotopy functors associates a tower of polynomial approximations, the Taylor tower, to a functor of topological spaces over a fixed space. We define a new tower, the varying center tower, for functors of categories with a fixed initial object, such as algebras under a fixed ring spectrum. We construct this new tower using elements of the Taylor tower constructions of Bauer, Johnson, and McCarthy for functors of simplicial model categories, and show how the varying center tower differs from Taylor towers in terms of the properties of its individual terms and convergenc…
Let F be a homotopy functor with values in the category of spectra. We show that partially stabilized cross-effects of F have an action of a certain operad. For functors from based spaces to spectra, it is the Koszul dual of the little discs operad. For functors from spectra to spectra it is a desuspension of the commutative operad. It follows that the Goodwillie derivatives of F are a right module over a certain `pro-operad'. For functors from spaces to spectra, the pro-operad is a resolution of the topological Lie operad. For functors from spectra to spectra, it is a resolution of the trivia…
We study the connection between the Goodwillie tower of the identity and the lower central series of the loop group on connected spaces. We define the simplicial theory of homotopy n-nilpotent groups. This notion interpolates between infinite loop spaces and loop spaces. We prove that the set-valued algebraic theory obtained by applying $π_0$ is the theory of ordinary n-nilpotent groups and that the Goodwillie tower of a connected space is determined by a certain homotopy left Kan extension. We prove that n-excisive functors of the form $ΩF$ have values in homotopy n-nilpotent groups.
We prove that the Goodwillie tower of a weak equivalence preserving functor from spaces to spectra can be expressed in terms of the tower for stable mapping spaces. Our proof is motivated by interpreting the functors P_n and D_n as pseudo-differential operators which suggests certain `integral' presentations based on a derived Yoneda embedding. These models allow one to extend computational tools available for the tower of stable mapping spaces. As an application we give a classical expression for the derivative over the basepoint.
We describe Taylor towers for spaces of knots arising from Goodwillie-Weiss calculus of the embedding functor and extend the configuration space integrals of Bott and Taubes from spaces of knots to the stages of the towers. We show that certain combinations of integrals, indexed by trivalent diagrams, yield cohomology classes of the stages of the tower, just as they do for ordinary knots.
Let R be a discrete unital ring, and let M be an R-bimodule. We extend Waldhausen's equivalence from the suspension of the Nil K-theory of R with coefficients in M to the K theory of the tensor algebra T_R(M), and get a map from the suspension of the K-theory of parametrized endomorphism of R with coefficients in M to the K-theory of the ring of formal power series in M over R. This map induces an equivalence on the finite stages in the Goodwillie Taylor tower of the functors. When M is connected, this map is an equivalence. For general M, we use the map to show that the suspension of the the …
We describe new structure on the Goodwillie derivatives of a functor, and we show how the full Taylor tower of the functor can be recovered from this structure. This new structure takes the form of a coalgebra over a certain comonad which we construct, and whose precise nature depends on the source and target categories of the functor in question. The Taylor tower can be recovered from standard cosimplicial cobar constructions on the coalgebra formed by the derivatives. We get from this an equivalence between the homotopy category of polynomial functors and that of bounded coalgebras over this…
Let Map_T(K,X) denote the mapping space of continuous based functions between two based spaces K and X. If K is a fixed finite complex, Greg Arone has recently given an explicit model for the Goodwillie tower of the functor sending a space X to the suspension spectrum Σ^\infty Map_T(K,X). Applying a generalized homology theory h_* to this tower yields a spectral sequence, and this will converge strongly to h_*(Map_T(K,X)) under suitable conditions, e.g. if h_* is connective and X is at least dim K connected. Even when the convergence is more problematic, it appears the spectral sequence can st…
This paper investigates the space of codimension zero embeddings of a Poincare duality space in a disk. One of our main results exhibits a tower that interpolates from the space of Poincare immersions to a certain space of "unlinked" Poincare embeddings. The layers of this tower are described in terms of the coefficient spectra of the identity appearing in Goodwillie's homotopy functor calculus. We also answer a question posed to us by Sylvain Cappell. The appendix proposes a conjectural relationship between our tower and the manifold calculus tower for the smooth embedding space.
This is a (slightly edited) version of the PhD dissertation of the author, submitted to Brown University in July 2005. We construct a homotopy calculus of functors in the sense of Goodwillie for the categories of rational homotopy theory. More precisely, given a homotopy functor between any of the categories of differential graded vector spaces (DG), reduced differential graded vector spaces, differential graded Lie algebras (DGL), and differential graded coalgebras (DGC), we show that there is an associated approximating "rational Taylor tower" of excisive functors. The fibers in this tower a…
We study functors F from C_f to D where C and D are simplicial model categories and C_f is the full subcategory of C consisting of objects that factor a fixed morphism f from A to B. We define the analogs of Eilenberg and Mac Lane's cross effects functors in this context, and identify explicit adjoint pairs of functors whose associated cotriples are the diagonals of the cross effects. With this, we generalize the cotriple Taylor tower construction of [10] from the setting of functors from pointed categories to abelian categories to that of functors from C_f to D to produce a tower of functors …
This work continues the study of a homotopy-theoretic construction of the author inspired by the Bott-Taubes integrals. Bott and Taubes constructed knot invariants by integrating differential forms along the fiber of a bundle over the space of knots. Their techniques were later used by Cattaneo et al. to construct real "Vassiliev-type" cohomology classes in spaces of knots in higher-dimensional Euclidean space. By doing this integration via a Pontrjagin-Thom construction, we constructed cohomology classes in the knot space with arbitrary coefficients. We later showed that a refinement of this …
We study nilpotency in the context of exact Mal'tsev categories taking central extensions as the primitive notion. This yields a nilpotency tower which is analysed from the perspective of Goodwillie's functor calculus. We show in particular that the reflection into the subcategory of $n$-nilpotent objects is the universal endofunctor of degree $n$ if and only if every $n$-nilpotent object is $n$-folded. In the special context of a semi-abelian category, an object is $n$-folded precisely when its Higgins commutator of length $n+1$ vanishes.
