Philip J. Higgins | Searcharxiv

arXiv2004

Thin Elements and Commutative Shells in Cubical omega-categories

The relationships between thin elements, commutative shells and connections in cubical omega-categories are explored by a method which does not involve the use of pasting theory or nerves of omega-categories (both of which were previously needed for this purpose; see previous work by Al-Agl/Brown/Steiner. It is shown that composites of commutative shells are commutative and that thin structures are equivalent to appropriate sets of connections; this work extends to all dimensions the results proved in dimensions 2 and 3 by Brown/Mosa, and Brown/Kamps/Porter.

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arXiv2002

The fundamental groupoid of the quotient of a Hausdorff space by a discontinuous action of a discrete group is the orbit groupoid of the induced action

The main result is that the fundamental groupoid of the orbit space of a discontinuous action of a discrete group on a Hausdorff space which admits a universal cover is the orbit groupoid of the fundamental groupoid of the space. We also describe work of Higgins and of Taylor which makes this result usable for calculations. As an example, we compute the fundamental group of the symmetric square of a space. The main result, which is related to work of Armstrong, is due to Brown and Higgins in 1985 and was published in sections 9 and 10 of Chapter 9 of the first author's book on Topology (Ellis Horwood, 1988). This is a somewhat edited, and in one point (on normal closures) corrected, version of those sections. Since the book is out of print, and the result seems not well known, we now advertise it here. It is hoped that this account will also allow wider views of these results, for example in topos theory and descent theory. Because of its provenance, this should be read as a graduate text rather than an article. The Exercises should be regarded as further propositions for which we leave the proofs to the reader. It is expected that this material will be part of a new edition of the book.

math.AT↗

arXiv2002

Cubical abelian groups with connections are equivalent to chain complexes

The theorem of the title is deduced from the equivalence between crossed complexes and cubical $ω$-groupoids with connections proved by the authors in 1981. In fact we prove the equivalence of five categories defined internally to an additive category with kernels.

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