This is the second of a series of papers which are devoted to a comprehensive theory of maps between orbifolds. In this paper, we develop a basic machinery for studying homotopy classes of such maps. It contains two parts: (1) the construction of a set of algebraic invariants -- the homotopy groups, and (2) an analog of CW-complex theory. As a corollary of this machinery, the classical Whitehead theorem which asserts that a weak homotopy equivalence is a homotopy equivalence is extended to the orbifold category.
Lie groupoids generalize transformation groups, and so provide a natural language for studying orbifolds and other noncommutative geometries. In this paper, we investigate a connection between orbifolds and equivariant stable homotopy theory using such groupoids. A different sort of twisted sector, along with a classical theorem of tom Dieck, allows for a natural definition of stable orbifold homotopy groups, and motivates defining extended unstable orbifold homotopy groups generalizing previous definitions.
Let $X$ be a $4$-dimensional toric orbifold. If $H^3(X)$ has a non-trivial odd primary torsion, then we show that $X$ is homotopy equivalent to the wedge of a Moore space and a CW-complex. As a corollary, given two 4-dimensional toric orbifolds having no 2-torsion in the cohomology, we prove that they have the same homotopy type if and only their integral cohomology rings are isomorphic.
We propose a notion of 1-homotopy for generalized maps. This notion generalizes those of natural transformation and ordinary homotopy for functors. The 1-homotopy type of a Lie groupoid is shown to be invariant under Morita equivalence. As an application we consider orbifolds as groupoids and study the notion of orbifold 1-homotopy type induced by a 1-homotopy between presentations of the orbifold maps.
For an orbifold M we define a homology group, called t-singular homology group t-H_q(M), which depends not only on the topological structure of the underlying space of M, but also on the orbifold structure of M. We prove that it is a b-homotopy invariant of orbifolds. If M is a manifold, t-H_q(M) coincides with the usual singular homology group. We calculate the t-singular homology groups with Z-coefficients of several orbifolds. The t-singular homology group with rational coefficients of an orbifold M is isomorphic to the singular homology group with rational coefficients of M (and to that of…
Informally, an orbifold is a smooth space whose points may have finitely many internal symmetries. Formally, however, the notion of orbifold has been presented in a number of different guises -- from Satake's V-manifolds to Moerdijk and Pronk's proper étale groupoids -- which do not on their face resemble the informal definition. The reason for this divergence between formalism and intuition is that the points of spaces cannot have internal symmetries in traditional, set-level foundations. The extra data of these symmetries must be carried around and accounted for throughout the theory. More d…
We describe various equivalent ways of associating to an orbifold, or more generally a higher étale differentiable stack, a weak homotopy type. Some of these ways extend to arbitrary higher stacks on the site of smooth manifolds, and we show that for a differentiable stack X arising from a Lie groupoid G, the weak homotopy type of X agrees with that of BG. Using this machinery, we are able to find new presentations for the weak homotopy type of certain classifying spaces. In particular, we give a new presentation for the Borel construction of an almost free action of a Lie group G on a smooth …
In 1985, physicists Dixon, Harvey, Vafa and Witten studied string theories on Calabi-Yau orbifolds (cf. [DHVW]). An interesting discovery in their paper was the prediction that a certain physicist's Euler number of the orbifold must be equal to the Euler number of any of its crepant resolutions. This was soon related to the so called McKay correspondence in mathematics (cf. [McK]). Later developments include stringy Hodge numbers (cf. [Z], [BD]), mirror symmetry of Calabi-Yau orbifolds (cf. [Ro]), and most recently the Gromov-Witten invariants of symplectic orbifolds (cf. [CR1-2]). One common …
We propose a new homotopy invariant for Lie groupoids which generalizes the classical Lusternik-Schnirelmann category for topological spaces. We use a bicategorical approach to develop a notion of contraction in this context. We propose a notion of homotopy between generalized maps given by the 2-arrows in a certain bicategory of fractions. This notion is invariant under Morita equivalence. Thus, when the groupoid defines an orbifold, we have a well defined LS-category for orbifolds. We prove an orbifold version of the classical Lusternik-Schnirelmann theorem for critical points.
The paper is devoted to introduce some notions extending the unique path lifting property from a homotopy viewpoint and to study their roles in the category of fibrations. First, we define some homotopical kinds of the unique path lifting property and find all possible relationships between them. Moreover, we supplement the full relationships of these new notions in the presence of fibrations. Second, we deduce some results in the category of fibrations with these notions instead of unique path lifting such as the existence of products and coproducts. Also, we give a brief comparison of these …
This work was intended as an attempt to investigate a model of irreversible process and natural phenomena. For this, we introduce the notion of irreversible path (that for brevity we write ir-path), ir-homotopy, ir-contractible space, and Lusternik-Schnirelmann ir-category by equipping the $I=[0,1]$ with left order topology. We will restrict the irreversibility of definitions to $T_0$ Spaces, such that for $T_1$ spaces, the ir-paths are constant. After providing some theorems and properties of these notions, eventually, we prove that Lusternik-Schnirelmann ir-category is an invariant of ir-hom…
We give an alternative to Postnikov's homotopy classification of maps from 3-dimensional CW-complexes to homogeneous spaces G/H of Lie groups. It describes homotopy classes in terms of lifts to the group G and is suitable for extending the notion of homotopy to Sobolev maps. This is required for applications to variational problems of mathematical physics.
We introduce some compact orbifolds on which there is a certain finite group action having a simple convex polytope as the orbit space. We compute the orbifold fundamental group and homology groups of these orbifolds. We calculate the cohomology rings of these orbifolds when the dimension of the orbifold is even. These orbifolds are intimately related to the notion of small cover.
We use equivariant methods to establish basic properties of orbifold K-theory. We introduce the notion of twisted orbifold K-theory in the presence of discrete torsion, and show how it can be explicitly computed for global quotients.
Algebraic topological methods have been used successfully in concurrency theory, the domain of theoretical computer science that deals with distributed computing. L. Fajstrup, E. Goubault, and M. Raussen have introduced partially ordered spaces (pospaces) as a model for concurrent systems. In this paper it is shown that the category of pospaces under a fixed pospace is both a fibration and a cofibration category in the sense of H. Baues. The homotopy notion in this fibration and cofibration category is relative directed homotopy. It is also shown that the category of pospaces is a closed model…
We define a notion of homotopy Segal cooperad in the category of $ E_\infty $-algebras. This model of Segal cooperad that we define in the paper, which we call homotopy Segal $ E_\infty $-Hopf cooperad, covers examples given by the cochain complex of topological operads and provides a framework for the study of the homotopy of such objects. In a first step, we consider a category of Segal $ E_\infty $-Hopf cooperads, which consists of collections of $ E_\infty $-algebras indexed by trees and equipped with coproduct operators, corresponding to tree morphisms, together with facet operators, corr…
In this expository paper written for physicists and geometers we introduce the notions of TQFT and of orbifold. Then we survey the construction of TQFT's originating from orbifolds such as Chen-Ruan theory and Orbifold String Topology.
Digital topology is part of the ongoing endeavour to understand and analyze digitized images. With a view to supporting this endeavour, many notions from algebraic topology have been introduced into the setting of digital topology. But some of the most basic notions from homotopy theory remain largely absent from the digital topology literature. We embark on a development of homotopy theory in digital topology, and define such fundamental notions as function spaces, path spaces, and cofibrations in this setting. We establish digital analogues of basic homotopy-theoretic properties such as the …
Given a finite $\mathbb{Z}_2$-graded group $\hat{\mathsf{G}}$ with ungraded subgroup $\mathsf{G}$ and a twisted cocycle $\hatλ \in Z^n(B \hat{\mathsf{G}}; \mathsf{U}(1)_π)$ which restricts to $λ\in Z^n(B \mathsf{G}; \mathsf{U}(1))$, we construct a lift of $λ$-twisted $\mathsf{G}$-Dijkgraaf--Witten theory to an unoriented topological quantum field theory. Our construction uses a new class of homotopy field theories, which we call orientation twisted. We also introduce an orientation twisted variant of the orbifold procedure, which produces an unoriented topological field theory from an orientat…
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of loop groupoid associated to a groupoid. After studying the general properties of the loop groupoid, we show how this notion provides a very natural geometric interpretation for the twisted sectors of an orbifold, and for the inner local systems introduced by Ruan by means of a natural generalization of the concept holonomy of a gerbe.
Algebraic topological methods have been used successfully in concurrency theory, the domain of theoretical computer science that deals with parallel computing. L. Fajstrup, E. Goubault, and M. Raussen have introduced partially ordered spaces (pospaces) as a model for concurrent systems. In this paper it is shown that the category of pospaces under a fixed pospace is both a fibration and a cofibration category in the sense of H. Baues. The homotopy notion in this fibration and cofibration category is relative directed homotopy. It is also shown that the category of pospaces is a closed model ca…
In this paper we present the notion of smooth CW complexes given by attaching cubes on the category of diffeological spaces, and we study their smooth homotopy structures related to the homotopy extension property.
We show that homotopy pullbacks of sheaves of simplicial sets over a Grothendieck topology distribute over homotopy colimits; this generalizes a result of Puppe about topological spaces. In addition, we show that inverse image functors between categories of simplicial sheaves preserve homotopy pullback squares. The method we use introduces the notion of a sharp map, which is analogous to the notion of a quasi-fibration of spaces, and seems to be of independent interest.
Bousfield and Kan's $\mathbb{Q}$-completion and fiberwise $\mathbb{Q}$-completion of spaces lead to two different approaches to the rational homotopy theory of non-simply connected spaces. In the first approach, a map is a weak equivalence if it induces an isomorphism on rational homology. In the second, a map of connected and pointed spaces is a weak equivalence if it induces an isomorphism between fundamental groups and higher rationalized homotopy groups; we call these maps $π_1$-rational homotopy equivalences. In this paper, we compare these two notions and show that $π_1$-rational homotop…
The goal of the present paper is to compare, in a precise way, two notions of operads up to homotopy which appear in the literature. Namely, we construct a functor from the category of strict unital homotopy colored operads to the category of infinity-operads. The former notion, that we make precise, is the operadic generalization of the notion of A-infinity-categories and the latter notion was defined by Moerdijk--Weiss in order to generalize the simplicial notion of infinity-category of Joyal--Lurie. This functor extends in two directions the simplicial nerve of Faonte--Lurie for A-infinity-…
We introduce and study a notion of cylinder coherator similar to the notion of Grothendieck coherator which define more flexible notion of weak infinity groupoids. We show that each such cylinder coherator produces a combinatorial semi-model category of weak infinity groupoids, whose objects are all fibrant and which is in a precise sense "freely generated by an object". We show that all those semi model categories are Quillen equivalent together and Quillen to the model category of spaces. A general procedure is given to produce such coherator, and several explicit examples are presented: one…
In 1995 the author, Jones, and Segal introduced the notion of "Floer homotopy theory". The proposal was to attach a (stable) homotopy type to the geometric data given in a version of Floer homology. More to the point, the question was asked, "When is the Floer homology isomorphic to the (singular) homology of a naturally occuring (pro)spectrum defined from the properties of the moduli spaces inherent in the Floer theory?". A proposal for how to construct such a spectrum was given in terms of a "framed flow category", and some rather simple examples were described. Years passed before this noti…
Twisted diagrams are "diagrams" with components in different categories. Structure maps are defined using auxiliary data which consists of functors relating the various categories to each other. Prime examples of the construction are spectra (in the sense of homotopy theory) and quasi-coherent sheaves on schemes. We develop the basic theory of twisted diagrams, and establish various model structures (which are well-known in special cases). We also introduce a notion of homotopy sheaves, a collection of local data which is compatible up to weak equivalence, and study basic properties of such ob…
We study the notion of twisting elements $da=a\cup_1a$ with respect to $\cup_1$ product when it is a part of homotopy Gerstenhaber algebra structure. This allows to bring to one context the two classical concepts, the theory of deformation of algebras of M. Gerstenhaber, and $A(\infty)$-algebras of J. Stasheff.
We define a homotopy relation between arrows of a category with weak equivalences, and give a condition under which the quotient by the homotopy relation yields the homotopy category. In the case of the fibrant-cofibrant objects of a model category this condition holds, and we show that our notion of homotopy coincides with the classical one. We also show that Quillen's construction of the homotopy category of a model category, in which the arrows are homotopical classes of a single arrow between fibrant-cofibrant objects, can be made as well for categories with weak equivalences using this no…
The notion of a cyclic map g: A -> X is a natural generalization of a Gottlieb element in pi_n(X). We investigate cyclic maps from a rational homotopy theory point of view. We show a number of results for rationalized cyclic maps which generalize well-known results on the rationalized Gottlieb groups.
In this paper we propose to use a relative variant of the notion of the étale homotopy type of an algebraic variety in order to study the existence of rational points on it. In particular, we use an appropriate notion of homotopy fixed points in order to construct obstructions to the local-global principle. The main results in this paper are the connections between these obstructions and the classical obstructions, such as the Brauer-Manin, the étale-Brauer and certain descent obstructions. These connections allow one to understand the various classical obstructions in a unified framework.
We construct a Quillen model structure on the category of spectral categories, where the weak equivalences are the symmetric spectra analogue of the notion of equivalence of categories.
We introduce a strong homotopy notion of a cyclic symmetric inner product of an A-infinity algebra and prove a characterization theorem in the formalism of the infinity inner products by Tradler. We also show that it is equivalent to the notion of a non-constant symplectic structure on the corresponding formal non-commutative supermanifold. We show that (open Gromov-Witten type) potential for a cyclic filtered A-infinity algebra is invariant under the cyclic filtered A-infinity homomorphism up to reparametrization, cyclization and a constant addition, generalizing the work of Kajiura.
We investigate a notion of $\times$-homotopy of graph maps that is based on the internal hom associated to the categorical product in the category of graphs. It is shown that graph $\times$-homotopy is characterized by the topological properties of the $\Hom$ complex, a functorial way to assign a poset (and hence topological space) to a pair of graphs; $\Hom$ complexes were introduced by Lovász and further studied by Babson and Kozlov to give topological bounds on chromatic number. Along the way, we also establish some structural properties of $\Hom$ complexes involving products and exponentia…
Let M be a monoidal category endowed with a distinguished class of weak equivalences and with appropriately compatible classifying bundles for monoids and comonoids. We define and study homotopy-invariant notions of normality for maps of monoids and of conormality for maps of comonoids in M. These notions generalize both principal bundles and crossed modules and are preserved by nice enough monoidal functors, such as the normaliized chain complex functor. We provide several explicit classes of examples of homotopy-normal and of homotopy-conormal maps, when M is the category of simplicial sets …
Multi-fan is an analogous notion of fan. As a fan is associated to a toric variety a multi-fan is associated to a torus orbifold. Orbifold elliptic class and orbifold elliptic genus are defined for a triple of a multi-fan, a set of generating integral vectors of one dimensional cones and a $\mathbb{Q}$ divisor. They are shown to behave functorially with respect to birational morphisms between these triples. The result may be considered as a combinatorial or topological analogue of the main result of Borisov and Libgober, McKay correspondence for elliptic genera, Ann. of Math., 161 (2005).
In the last year of his life, Bob Thomason reworked the notion of a model category, used to adapt homotopy theory to algebra, and used homotopy ends to affirmatively solve a problem raised by Grothendieck: find a notion of model structure which is inherited by functor categories. In this paper we explain and prove Thomason's results, based on his private notebooks. The first half presents Thomason's ideas about homotopy ends and its generalizations. This material may be of independent interest. Then we define Thomason model categories and give some examples. The usual proof shows that the homo…
For a Kan complex with a vertex, we have the notion of its simplicial homotopy groups. In this paper, for a weak complicial set in the sense of Verity with a vertex, we construct monoids which are a generalization of simplicial homotopy groups.
We prove that a weak equivalence between two cofibrant (colored) props in chain complexes induces a Dwyer-Kan equivalence between the simplicial localizations of the associated categories of algebras. This homotopy invariance under base change implies that the homotopy category of homotopy algebras over a prop P does not depend on the choice of a cofibrant resolution of P, and gives thus a coherence to the notion of algebra up to homotopy in this setting. The result is established more generally for algebras in combinatorial monoidal dg categories.
This is the first in a series of papers devoted to foundations of topological stacks. We begin developing a homotopy theory for topological stacks along the lines of classical homotopy theory of topological spaces. In this paper we go as far as introducing the homotopy groups and establishing their basic properties. We also develop a Galois theory of covering spaces for a (locally connected semilocally 1-connected) topological stack. Built into the Galois theory is a method for determining the stacky structure (i.e., inertia groups) of covering stacks. As a consequence, we get for free a chara…
With a view towards providing tools for analyzing and understanding digitized images, various notions from algebraic topology have been introduced into the setting of digital topology. In the ordinary topological setting, invariants such as the fundamental group are invariants of homotopy type. In the digital setting, however, the usual notion of homotopy leads to a very rigid invariance that does not correspond well with the topological notion of homotopy invariance. In this paper, we establish fundamental results about subdivision of maps of digital images with $1$- or $2$-dimensional domain…
We start to study the problem of classifying smooth proper varieties over a field k from the standpoint of A^1-homotopy theory. Motivated by the topological theory of surgery, we discuss the problem of classifying up to isomorphism all smooth proper varieties having a specified A^1-homotopy type. Arithmetic considerations involving the sheaf of A^1-connected components lead us to introduce several different notions of connectedness in A^1-homotopy theory. We provide concrete links between these notions, connectedness of points by chains of affine lines, and various rationality properties of al…
In this study we introduce the notions of semi-homotopy of semi-continuous maps and of semi-paths. We also construct a group structure, which will be called semi-fundamental group, using semi-loops and explore some properties of semi-homotopy and semi-fundamental groups.
We construct a notion of derived completion which applies to homomorphisms of commutative S-algebras. We study the relationship of the construction with other constructions of completions, and prove various invariance properties. The construction is expected to have applications within algebraic K-theory.
In a previous article, we introduced notions of finiteness obstruction, Euler characteristic, and L^2-Euler characteristic for wide classes of categories. In this sequel, we prove the compatibility of those notions with homotopy colimits of I-indexed categories where I is any small category admitting a finite I-CW-model for its I-classifying space. Special cases of our Homotopy Colimit Formula include formulas for products, homotopy pushouts, homotopy orbits, and transport groupoids. We also apply our formulas to Haefliger complexes of groups, which extend Bass--Serre graphs of groups to highe…
We adapt the notion of an algebraic theory to work in the setting of quasicategories developed recently by Joyal and Lurie. We develop the general theory at some length. We study one extended example in detail: the theory of commutative monoids (which turns out to be essentially just a 2-category). This gives a straightforward, combinatorially explicit, and instructive notion of a commutative monoid. We prove that this definition is equivalent (in appropriate senses) both to the classical concept of an E-infinity monoid and to Lurie's concept of a commutative algebra object.
This series explores a new notion of T-homotopy equivalence of flows. The new definition involves embeddings of finite bounded posets preserving the bottom and the top elements and the associated cofibrations of flows. In this fourth part, it is proved that the generalized T-homotopy equivalences preserve the underlying homotopy type of a flow. The proof is based on Reedy model category techniques.
This is an expended and revised version of the preprint "Schematization of homotopy types". The purpose of this work is to introduce a notion of \emph{affine stacks}, which is a homotopy version of the notion of affine schemes, and to give several applications in the context of algebraic topology and algebraic geometry. As a first application we show how affine stacks can be used in order to give a new point of view (and new proofs) on rational and $p$-adic homotopy theory. This gives a first solution to A. Grothendieck's \emph{schematization problem} described in \cite{gr}. We also use affine…
