Homotopy theories via the magnitude-path spectral sequence

Abstract

We introduce a family of homotopy theories for generalized metric spaces with natural number distances, via the magnitude-path spectral sequence (MPSS). The first page of the MPSS is known as magnitude homology; the second page is known as bigraded path homology, and contains GLMY path homology as its top row. For each natural number r, we define a class of maps of metric spaces called r-quasi-isomorphisms: those maps that induce a quasi-isomorphism at page r of the MPSS. We show that every page of the spectral sequence satisfies a suitable metric analogue of each of the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms. In particular, we introduce the notion of r-cofibration and prove a Mayer-Vietoris theorem for page r with respect to r-cofibrations. We establish a family of Brown category structures on generalized metric spaces which allow us to explicitly compute homotopy colimits. We apply this to describe r-suspension and r-spheres of dimension n, and compute their spectral sequences. Finally we prove that for r = 1 the entire theory restricts to directed graphs.