If F is a collection of topological spaces, then a homotopy class αin [X,Y] is called F-trivial if α_* = 0: [A,X] --> [A,Y] for all A in F. In this paper we study the collection Z_F(X,Y) of all F-trivial homotopy classes in [X,Y] when F = S, the collection of spheres, F = M, the collection of Moore spaces, and F = Σ, the collection of suspensions. Clearly Z_Σ(X,Y) \subset Z_M(X,Y) \subset Z_S(X,Y), and we find examples of finite complexes X and Y for which these inclusions are strict. We are also interested in Z_F(X) = Z_F(X,X), which under composition has the structure of a semigroup with zero. We show that if X is a finite dimensional complex and F = S, M or Σ, then the semigroup Z_F(X) is nilpotent. More precisely, the nilpotency of Z_F(X) is bounded above by the F-killing length of X, a new numerical invariant which equals the number of steps it takes to make X contractible by successively attaching cones on wedges of spaces in F, and this in turn is bounded above by the F-cone length of X. We then calculate or estimate the nilpotency of Z_F(X) when F = S, M or Σfor the following classes of spaces: (1) projective spaces (2) certain Lie groups such as SU(n) and Sp(n). The paper concludes with several open problems.
In this paper we study the relationship between the homology and homotopy of a space at infinity and at its boundary. Firstly, we prove that if a locally connected, connected, $δ$-hyperbolic space that is acted upon geometrically by a group has trivial homotopy at infinity then the first Čech homotopy group is trivial. Secondly, we prove that if a hyperbolic group on a finite field has trivial $i^{th}$ homology at infinity then the boundary of the group has trivial $i^{th}$ Steenrod homology. This result turns out to be important in addressing an open problem related to Cannon's conjecture.
In "Homotopy decomposition of classifying spaces via elementary Abelian subgroups", Stephan Jackowski and James McClure show, for functors admitting a Mackey complement over categories holding a direct product, a general result on vanishing cohomology. We develop a framework leading to a general result on trivial homotopy which partially generalizes Jackowski and McClure's result in two different directions.
We show that there exist non-trivial piecewise-linear (PL) knots with isolated singularities $S^{n-2}\subset S^n$, $n\geq 5$, whose complements have the homotopy type of a circle. This is in contrast to the case of smooth, PL locally-flat, and topological locally-flat knots, for which it is known that if the complement has the homotopy type of a circle, then the knot is trivial.
We prove that if a finite group $G$ has a representation with fixity $f$, then it acts freely and homologically trivially on a finite CW-complex homotopy equivalent to a product of $f+1$ spheres. This shows, in particular, that every finite group acts freely and homologically trivially on some finite CW-complex homotopy equivalent to a product of spheres.
We construct an example of a Peano continuum $X$ such that: (i) $X$ is a one-point compactification of a polyhedron; (ii) $X$ is weakly homotopy equivalent to a point (i.e. $π_n(X)$ is trivial for all $n \geq 0$); (iii) $X$ is noncontractible; and (iv) $X$ is homologically and cohomologically locally connected (i.e. $X$ is a $HLC$ and $clc$ space). We also prove that all classical homology groups (singular, Čech, and Borel-Moore), all classical cohomology groups (singular and Čech), and all finite-dimensional Hawaiian groups of $X$ are trivial.
Let E be an H-space acting on a based space X. Then we refer to ev: E -> X, the map obtained by acting on the base point of X, as a ``generalized evaluation map." We establish several fundamental results about the rational homotopy behaviour of a generalized evaluation map, all of which apply to the usual evaluation map Map(X,X;1)->X. With mild hypotheses on X, we show that a generalized evaluation map ev factors, up to rational homotopy, through a map Gamma_ev: S_ev -> X where S_ev is a (relatively small) finite product of odd-dimensional spheres and the map induced by Gamma_ev on rational ho…
We establish certain conditions which imply that a map $f:X\to Y$ of topological spaces is null homotopic when the induced integral cohomology homomorphism is trivial; one of them is: $H^*(X)$ and $π_*(Y)$ have no torsion and $H^*(Y)$ is polynomial.
The semigroup of the homotopy classes of the self-homotopy maps of a finite complex which induce the trivial homomorphism on homotopy groups is nilpotent. We determine the nilpotency of these semigroups of compact Lie groups and finite Hopf spaces of rank 2. We also study the nilpotency of semigroups for Lie groups of higher rank. Especially, we give Lie groups with the nilpotency of the semigroups arbitrarily large.
Let $\rm{Aut}(p)$ denote the space of all self-fibre homotopy equivalences of a principal $G$-bundle $p: E\rightarrow X$ of simply connected CW complexes with $E$ finite. When $G$ is a compact connected topological group, we show that there exists an inequality $$n-{\rm N}(p)\leq {\rm Hnil}_{\mathbb{Q}}({\rm{Aut}}(p)_0)\leq n$$ for any space $X$, where $n$ is the number of non-trivial rational homotopy groups of $G$ and ${\rm N}(p)$ is defined in Section 2. In particular, ${\rm Hnil}_{\mathbb{Q}}({\rm{Aut}}(p)_{0})=n$ if $p$ is a fibre-homotopy trivial bundle and X is finite.
We study the group of homotopy classes of self maps of compact Lie groups which induce the trivial homomorphism on homotopy groups. We completely determine the groups for SU(3) and Sp(2). We investigate these groups for simple Lie groups in the cases when Lie groups are p-regular or quasi p-regular. We apply our results to the groups of self homotopy equivalences.
Let $G$ be a compact connected Lie group and $n\geqslant 1$ an integer. Consider the space of ordered commuting $n$-tuples in $G$, $Hom(\mathbb{Z}^n,G)$, and its quotient under the adjoint action, $Rep(\mathbb{Z}^n,G):=Hom(\mathbb{Z}^n,G)/G$. In this article we study and in many cases compute the homotopy groups $π_2(Hom(\mathbb{Z}^n,G))$. For $G$ simply--connected and simple we show that $π_2(Hom(\mathbb{Z}^2,G))\cong \mathbb{Z}$ and $π_2(Rep(\mathbb{Z}^2,G))\cong \mathbb{Z}$, and that on these groups the quotient map $Hom(\mathbb{Z}^2,G)\to Rep(\mathbb{Z}^2,G)$ induces multiplication by the …
K. Orr defined a Milnor-type invariant of links that lies in the third homotopy group of a certain space $K_ω.$ The problem of non-triviality of this third homotopy group has been open. We show that it is an infinitely generated group. The question of realization of its elements as links remains open.
We establish a relative version of the abstract "affine representability" theorem in ${\mathbb A}^1$--homotopy theory from Part I of this paper. We then prove some ${\mathbb A}^1$--invariance statements for generically trivial torsors under isotropic reductive groups over infinite fields analogous to the Bass--Quillen conjecture for vector bundles. Putting these ingredients together, we deduce representability theorems for generically trivial torsors under isotropic reductive groups and for associated homogeneous spaces in ${\mathbb A}^1$--homotopy theory.
We show that the n-homotopy category of connected (n+1)-dimensional Menger manifolds is isomorphic to the homotopy category of connected Hilbert cube manifolds whose k-dimensional homotopy groups are trivial for each k > n.
We study the homotopy type of the harmonic compactification of the moduli space of a 2-cobordism S with one outgoing boundary component, or equivalently of the space of Sullivan diagrams of type S on one circle. Our results are of two types: vanishing and non-vanishing. In our vanishing results we are able to show that the connectivity of the harmonic compactification increases with the number of incoming boundary components. Moreover, we extend the genus stabilization maps of moduli spaces to the harmonic compactification and show that the connectivity of these maps increases with the genus a…
We discuss the relationship between the ${\mathbb A}^1$-homotopy sheaves of ${\mathbb A}^n \setminus 0$ and the problem of splitting off a trivial rank $1$ summand from a rank $n$-vector bundle. We begin by computing $π_3^{{\mathbb A}^1}({\mathbb A}^3 \setminus 0)$, and providing a host of related computations of "non-stable" ${\mathbb A}^1$-homotopy sheaves. We then use our computation to deduce that a rank $3$ vector bundle on a smooth affine $4$-fold over an algebraically closed field having characteristic unequal to $2$ splits off a trivial rank $1$ summand if and only if its third Chern c…
Let $M$ be a manifold homotopy equivalent to the complex projective space $\C P^m$. Petrie conjectured that $M$ has standard total Pontrjagin class if $M$ admits a non-trivial action by $S^1$. We prove the conjecture for $m<12$ under the assumption that the action extends to a nice $Pin(2)$-action with fixed point. The proof involves equivariant index theory for $Spin^c$-manifolds and Jacobi functions as well as classical results from the theory of transformation groups.
We show that a uniform probability measure supported on a specific set of piecewise linear loops in a non-trivial free homotopy class in a multi-punctured plane is overwhelmingly concentrated around loops of minimal lengths. Our approach is based on extending Mogulskii's theorem to closed paths, which is a useful result of independent interest. In addition, we show that the above measure can be sampled using standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques, thus providing a simple methods for approximating shortest loops.
In this master thesis, we extend results from classical simple homotopy theory to the world of stratified homotopy theory. To obtain a well-established framework to work in, we prove a series of results on two model categories of simplicial sets and topological spaces, both equipped with a notion of filtration, introduced by Sylvain Douteau in his PHD thesis. In particular, we show that there is a fully faithful embedding of homotopy categories from the (finite) filtered simplicial into the filtered topological setting. We also use these results to characterize the morphisms in the topological…
Motivated by constructions in topological data analysis and algebraic combinatorics, we study homotopy theory on the category of Cech closure spaces $\mathbf{Cl}$, the category whose objects are sets endowed with a Cech closure operator and whose morphisms are the continuous maps between them. We introduce new classes of Cech closure structures on metric spaces, graphs, and simplicial complexes, and we show how each of these cases gives rise to an interesting homotopy theory. In particular, we show that there exists a natural family of Cech closure structures on metric spaces which produces a …
We present a constructive method to compute the cellularization with respect to K(Z/p, m) for any integer m > 0 of a large class of H-spaces, namely all those which have a finite number of non-trivial K(Z/p, m)-homotopy groups (the pointed mapping space map(K(Z/p, m), X) is a Postnikov piece). We prove in particular that the K(Z/p, m)-cellularization of an H-space having a finite number of K(Z/p, m)-homotopy groups is a p-torsion Postnikov piece. Along the way we characterize the BZ/p^r-cellular classifying spaces of nilpotent groups.
The Brouwer fixed point theorem states that the disk $D^n$ has the fixed point property. More generally, by the Lefschetz fixed point theorem any compact ANR with trivial rational homology has the fixed point property. In this note we prove that for any connected compact CW-complex $K$ there exists a space $X$ weak homotopy equivalent to $K$ which has the fixed point property. The result is known to be false if we require $X$ to be a polyhedron. The space $X$ we construct is a non-Hausdorff space with finitely many points.
This paper studies a discrete homotopy theory for graphs introduced by Barcelo et al. We prove two main results. First we show that if $G$ is a graph containing no 3- or 4-cycles, then the $n$th discrete homotopy group $A_n(G)$ is trivial for all $n\geq 2$. Second we exhibit for each $n\geq 1$ a natural homomorphism $ψ:A_n(G)\to \mathcal{H}_n(G)$, where $\mathcal{H}_n(G)$ is the $n$th discrete cubical singular homology group, and an infinite family of graphs $G$ for which $\mathcal{H}_n(G)$ is nontrivial and $ψ$ is surjective. It follows that for each $n\geq 1$ there are graphs $G$ for which $…
For a complex projective space the inertia group, the homotopy inertia group and the concordance inertia group are isomorphic. In complex dimension 4n+1, these groups are related to computations in stable cohomotopy. Using stable homotopy theory, we make explicit computations to show that the inertia group is non-trivial in many cases. In complex dimension 9, we deduce some results on geometric structures on homotopy complex projective spaces and complex hyperbolic manifolds.
For locally homotopy trivial fibrations, one can define transition functions $$ g\dab : U\da\cap U\db \to H = H(F)$$ where $H$ is the monoid of homotopy equivalences of $F$ to itself but, instead of the cocycle condition, one obtains only that $g\dab g\dbgam$ is homotopic to $g\dagam$ as a map of $U\da\cap U\db\cap U\dgam$ into $H$. Moreover on multiple intersections, higher homotopies arise and are relevant to classifying the fibration. The full theory was worked out by the first author in his 1965 Notre Dame thesis \cite{wirth:diss}. Here we present it using language that has been developed …
We express the rational homotopy type of the mapping spaces $\mathrm{Map}^h(\mathsf D_m,\mathsf D_n^{\mathbb Q})$ of the little discs operads in terms of graph complexes. Using known facts about the graph homology this allows us to compute the rational homotopy groups in low degrees, and construct infinite series of non-trivial homotopy classes in higher degrees. Furthermore we show that for $n-m>2$, the spaces $\mathrm{Map}^h(\mathsf D_m,\mathsf D_n^{\mathbb Q})$ and $\mathrm{Map}^h(\mathsf D_m,\mathsf D_n)$ are simply connected and rationally equivalent. As application we determine the ratio…
For a space X, we define Frobenius and Verschiebung operations on the nil-terms NA^{fd} (X) in the algebraic K-theory of spaces, in three different ways. Two applications are included. Firstly, we obtain that the homotopy groups of NA^{fd} (X) are either trivial or not finitely generated as abelian groups. Secondly, the Verschiebung defines a Z[N_x]-module structure on the homotopy groups of NA^{fd} (X), with N_x the multiplicative monoid. We also we give a calculation of the homotopy groups of the nil-terms NA^{fd} (*) after p-completion for an odd prime p as Z_p[N_x]-modules up to dimension …
A central problem of algebraic topology is to understand the homotopy groups $π_d(X)$ of a topological space $X$. For the computational version of the problem, it is well known that there is no algorithm to decide whether the fundamental group $π_1(X)$ of a given finite simplicial complex $X$ is trivial. On the other hand, there are several algorithms that, given a finite simplicial complex $X$ that is simply connected (i.e., with $π_1(X)$ trivial), compute the higher homotopy group $π_d(X)$ for any given $d\geq 2$. %The first such algorithm was given by Brown, and more recently, Čadek et al. …
Let X be a simply connected Riemannian manifold. Until now, quantitative topology has used Sullivan's rational homotopy theory as the bridge between geometric information on X and torsion-free homotopy theoretic information on X. In this paper we introduce Chen's iterated integrals on the based loop space of X as a new bridge between these two areas. We give two applications: finding upper bounds for Gromov's distortion of higher homotopy groups on X and also proving the non-existence of homologically non-trivial small-volume cycles in the space of loops on X of length at most L.
We construct non-trivial elements of order 2 in the homotopy groups $π_{8j+1+*} Diff(D^6,\partial)$, for * congruent 1 or 2 modulo 8, which are detected by the "assembling homomorphism" (giving rise to the Gromoll filtration), followed by the alpha-invariant in $KO_*=Z/2$. These elements are constructed by means of Morlet's homotopy equivalence between $Diff(D^6,\partial)$ and $Ω^7(PL_6/O_6)$, and Toda brackets in $PL_6/O_6$. We also construct non-trivial elements of order 2 in $π_* PL_m$ for every m greater or equal to 6 and * congruent to 1 or 2 modulo 8, which are detected by the alpha-inva…
The fundamental bigroupoid of a topological space is one way of capturing its homotopy 2-type. When the space is semilocally 2-connected, one can lift the construction to a bigroupoid internal to the category of topological spaces, as Brown and Danesh-Naruie lifted the fundamental groupoid to a topological groupoid. For locally relatively contractible spaces the resulting topological bigroupoid is locally trivial in a way analogous to the case of the topologised fundamental groupoid.
A poset-stratified space is a pair $(S, S \xrightarrow πP)$ of a topological space $S$ and a continuous map $π: S \to P$ with a poset $P$ considered as a topological space with its associated Alexandroff topology. In this paper we show that one can impose such a poset-stratified space structure on the homotopy set $[X, Y]$ of homotopy classes of continuous maps by considering a canonical but non-trivial order (preorder) on it, namely we can capture the homotopy set $[X, Y]$ as an object of the category of poset-stratified spaces. The order we consider is related to the notion of \emph{dependen…
In this paper we define two regular homotopy invariants c and i for immersions of oriented 3-manifolds into R^5 in a geometric manner. The pair (c(f),i(f)) completely describes the regular homotopy class of the immersion f. The invariant i corresponds to the 3-dimensional obstruction that arises from Hirsch-Smale theory and extends the one defined in [10] for immersions with trivial normal bundle.
We consider the topology for a class of hypersurfaces with highly nonisolated singularites which arise as exceptional orbit varieties of a special class of prehomogeneous vector spaces, which are representations of linear algebraic groups with open orbits. These hypersurface singularities include both determinantal hypersurfaces and linear free (and free*) divisors. Although these hypersurfaces have highly nonisolated singularities, we determine the topology of their Milnor fibers, complements and links. We do so by using the action of linear algebraic groups beginning with the complement, ins…
We study the rational homotopy of the moduli space ${\mathcal N}_X$ of stable vector bundles of rank two and fixed determinant of odd degree over a compact connected Riemann surface $X$ of genus $g\geq 2$. The symplectic group $Aut(H_1(X,{\mathbb Z}))=Sp(2g,{\mathbb Z})$ has a natural action on the rational homotopy groups $π_n({\mathcal N}_X) \otimes {\mathbb Q}$. We prove that this action extends to an action of $Sp(2g,{\mathbb C})$ on $π_n({\mathcal N}_X) \otimes {\mathbb C}$. We also show that $π_n({\mathcal N}_X) \otimes {\mathbb C}$ is a non-trivial $Sp(2g,{\mathbb C})$-representation fo…
