English

Infinity-operadic foundations for embedding calculus

Algebraic Topology 2026-03-12 v2 Category Theory Geometric Topology

Abstract

Motivated by applications to spaces of embeddings and automorphisms of manifolds, we consider a tower of \infty-categories of truncated right-modules over a unital \infty-operad O\mathcal{O}. We study monoidality and naturality properties of this tower, identify its layers, describe the difference between the towers as O\mathcal{O} varies, and generalise these results to the level of Morita (,2)(\infty,2)-categories. Applied to the BO(d){\rm BO}(d)-framed EdE_d-operad, this extends Goodwillie-Weiss' embedding calculus and its layer identification to the level of bordism categories. Applied to other variants of the EdE_d-operad, it yields new versions of embedding calculus, such as one for topological embeddings, based on BTop(d){\rm BTop}(d), or one similar to Boavida de Brito-Weiss' configuration categories, based on BAut(Ed){\rm BAut}(E_d). In addition, we prove a delooping result in the context of embedding calculus, establish a convergence result for topological embedding calculus, improve upon the smooth convergence result of Goodwillie, Klein, and Weiss, and deduce an Alexander trick for homology 4-spheres.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.10991,
  title  = {Infinity-operadic foundations for embedding calculus},
  author = {Manuel Krannich and Alexander Kupers},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.10991},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

98 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Journal of Topology

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:47:32.217Z