Homotopy Colimits - Comparison Lemmas for Combinatorial Applications
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J. reine angew. Math. 50 9 (1999), 117-149 Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik © W a l t e r d e G r u y t e r Berlin · New York 1999 Homotopy colimits - comparison lemmas for combinatorial applications B y Volkmar Welker1) and Günter M. Ziegler2) at Berlin, and Rade T. Ž i v a l j e v i ć 3 ) at Belgrade A b s t r a c t .W e provide a “toolkit” of basic lemmas f o r the comparison o f homotopy types o f homotopy colimits o f diagrams of spaces over small categories. W e show how this toolkit can b e u s e d i n quite d i f f e r e n t fields o f applications. W e demonstrate this with respect to 1 . Björner’s “Generalized Homotopy Complementation Formula” [5], 2. the topology of toric varieties, 3. the study o f homotopy types o f arrangements o f subspaces, 4. the analysis o f homotopy types o f subgroup complexes. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper i s to advertise homotopy colimit considerations f o r topological investigations i n combinatorics. For this, w e provide a toolkit and demonstrate its u s e f u l n e s s b y a number of applications. A diagram of spaces is a functor from a small category to the category of topological spaces. In various topological, geometric, algebraic and combinatorial situations one has to deal with structures that can profitably be interpreted as (co)limits or homotopy (co)limits of diagrams over small categories, specially over (finite) posets. In fact, if a space is written as a finite union of (simpler) pieces, then it is the colimit of a corresponding diagram of spaces. While (co)limits do not have good functorial properties in homotopy theory, they can usually be replaced by homotopy (co)limits (Puppe [32] may have been the first to exploit this). Homotopy (co)limits have much better functorial properties. Thus there is 1) Supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). 2) Supported by a “Gerhard-Hess-Förderpreis” of the DFG, which also provided support for the authors’ joint work at the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB) in 1994. 3) Partially supported by the Serbian Science Foundation, Grant 04 M03. Bereitgestellt von | Technische Universität Berlin Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 09.11.18 17:08 118 Welker, Ziegler and Živaljević, Homotopy colimits a wide variety of techniques to manipulate diagrams of spaces in such a way that the homotopy (co)limit is preserved (up to homotopy type). Basic work on homotopy (co)limits has been done b y S e g a l [37], B o u s f i e l d and Kan [7], tom Dieck [42], V o g t [44], and Dwyer and Kan [11], [12]. S e e Hollender and V o g t [21] f o r a recent survey. T w o k e y results i n this setting are the “Projection Lemma” [3], [7], XII.3.1(iv), [15], [37], [49] which sometimes allows one to replace colimits b y homotopy colimits, and the “Homotopy Lemma” [42], [7], XII. 4.2, [44] which compares the homotopy types o f diagrams over the same small category. These tools have found striking applications, f o r example, i n the study o f subspace arrangements [49], [41], [36]. The choice o f contents f o r our “toolkit f o r the manipulation o f homotopy colimits” i s partially motivated b y the usefulness o f corresponding lemmas i n the special case o f order complexes (the discrete case, when the spaces o f the diagram are points). In this case, there i s a solid amount o f theory available, which has proved to be extremely powerful and u s e f u l i n quite diverse situations. The k e y result i s the Quillen Fiber Theorem (Quillen's “Theorem A” [33], [34], s e e below). A l l other basic tools o f the “homotopy theory o f posets”, such as the crosscut theorem, order homotopy theorem, complementation f o r ¬ mulas, etc., can be derived f r o m it. W e r e f e r to Björner [4] f o r an excellent account o f the theory [4], Sect. 1 0 , f o r an extensive survey o f applications [4], Part I, and f o r further references. Homotopy limits have not found immediate applications i n combinatorics and discrete geometry so far, and this i s the reason w h y w e restrict our attention to the case o f homotopy colimits. Also note that many results about homotopy limits can be derived f r o m the case o f homotopy colimits b y standard duality procedures ( s e e B o u s f i e l d and Kan [7], XII. 4.1, and Hollender and V o g t [21], Sect. 3). W e provide several applications o f our methods to various areas within mathematics. As a first application, i n the field o f topological combinatorics, w e present a n e w proof o f a result b y Björner on the homotopy type o f complexes [5], which generalizes the Homotopy Complementation Formula o f Björner and Walker [6], a tool which has proved to be v e r y powerful i n combinatorics. S i n c e this proof a f f o r d s the application o f many o f the techniques provided i n this paper, w e g i v e a detailed exposition of it here. Then w e present a n e w v i e w o f toric varieties. Namely, w e start with the observation that toric varieties are homeomorphic to homotopy colimits over the f a c e poset o f the f a n d e f i n i n g the variety. This immediately leads to a spectral sequence to compute the homology o f toric varieties isomorphic to one already employed b y Danilov [9]. We derive a new “combinatorial formula” for the homotopy types of quite general arrangements (such as “Grassmannian” arrangements) that are associated to linear sub- space arrangements by suitable functorial constructions. More briefly we cover two appli¬ cations for which details are contained in other papers: We describe a new result on the homotopy type of the order complex of the poset Sp(G) of non-trivial p-subgroups of a finite group G [31], and we review results obtained by homotopy limit methods on the topology of subspace arrangements in [49], and provide the equivalence with the results of Vassiliev [43]. Bereitgestellt von | Technische Universität Berlin Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 09.11.18 17:08 Welker, Ziegler and Živaljević, Homotopy colimits 119 2. F u n d a m e n t a l c o n c e p t s a n d c o n s t r u c t i o n s 2.1. Basic definitions and motivating examples of diagrams. In the following, all cate¬ gories are small, so their objects and morphisms form sets. Any partially ordered set can be considered as a category “with morphisms pointing down”, that is, for $ there is a (unique) arrow x → y if and only if $. A diagram of spaces over a small category A is a covariant functor $ into the category Top of topological spaces. We denote for an object $ the image under $ by Fa or by F (a), and for a morphism $ the image $ or b y F(g). I f there i s a unique morphism g : a → b i n A between a and b, then w e write fab for $. A morphism $ of diagrams $ and $ is a functor F:A → B together with a natural transformation α from $ to $. Given a diagram $, the homotopy colimit hocolim $ i s a space associated to $ b y a homotopy mixing construction, s e e Section 2.2. B e f o r e w e proceed with a reasonably detailed outline o f the theory, w e introduce several motivating examples o f diagrams o f spaces. Constant diagram. For a topological space X the constant diagram $ is defined by sending each object of A to the space X and each morphism to the identity id : X → X . Of particular interest is the case when $ is the one-point space. In this case the constant diagram $ leads, via homotopy colimits, to the construction of the classifying space BA of the category A. In the special case when A = P is a partially ordered set—a po s e t for short—the classifying space BP will be seen to coincide with the order complex Δ (P) of P . Group diagram. Given a discrete group G, let A G be th e ca t e g o r y wh i c h co n s i s t s of one single object and a morphism for each element $. Then the classifying space of this category is the K(G,1)-space $ of the group G. Its universal cover EG is constructed in a similar way from the category whose objects are the elements of the group. Here for each pair of elements $ the unique morphism from g to h is given by h g -1. Finally, any AG-diagram $ can be interpreted as a G-space X and it turns out that $.