Simple connectedness of the Ran space
Algebraic Topology
2026-02-20 v3 General Topology
Abstract
The space of all finite non-empty subsets of a topological space , also known as the Ran space of , is weakly contractible for path connected. We consider subspaces of the Ran space given by all subsets of of size at most , and present results on their first homotopy groups. In particular, we show that the induced map is trivial for all positive integers , and even more, show that for all , by explicitly drawing the path homotopies that contract any loop to a point.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.09815,
title = {Simple connectedness of the Ran space},
author = {Jānis Lazovskis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09815},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Key related work added. 6 pages, 3 figures. Comments welcome