Spaces as infinity-groupoids Timothy Porter, Emeritus Professor, Bangor, Wales, U.K.
[email protected] Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 The beginnings: recollections of Poincar´e'sfundamental groupoid. 3 2.1 Homotopy classes of paths . .4 2.2 Covering spaces . .6 2.3 Complexes as `presentations' of spaces and of groupoids . .7 3 Whitehead's algebraic and combinatorial homotopy 14 4 Higher homotopy groups, weak homotopy types, truncation and connectedness 15 4.1 Higher homotopy groups, and weak homotopy types . 15 4.2 n-connectedness . 17 4.3 n-truncation . 19 4.3.1 1-types and groupoids: . 20 4.3.2 2-types, crossed modules and 2-group(oid)s: . 22 4.3.3 2-groupoids, crossed modules and the Mac Lane-Whitehead theorem. 24 4.3.4 n-types for n ≥ 3....................... 25 4.4 Beyond 2-types towards infinity groupoids, from a classical/strict viewpoint . 26 4.5 From `2- ' heading to ‘infinity', from Grothendieck's viewpoint. 29 4.6 Appendix: more technical comments. 31 5 Simplicial sets, higher combinatorics and 1-groupoids 34 5.1 Kan complexes and 1-groupoids . 34 5.2 Simplicially enriched categories and groupoids . 36 5.3 Chain complexes, globular and simplicial models . 40 5.4 Appendix: Some Moore complex properties . 41 5.5 Higher dimensional combinatorial homotopy . 43 5.6 1-categories? . 44 6 Higher Galois theory and locally constant stacks. 45 6.1 `Stacks' . 45 6.2 ... and their pursuit . 47 1 7 Concluding discussion 49 1 Introduction As the title of this chapter suggests, there are aspects of `spaces' mirrored by things called `1-groupoids'.