English

The higher structure of unstable homotopy groups

Algebraic Topology 2025-02-24 v4

Abstract

We construct certain unstable higher-order homotopy operations indexed by the simplex categories of Δn\Delta^{n} for n2{n\geq 2} and prove that all elements in the homotopy groups of a wedge of spheres are generated under such operations by Whitehead products and the group structure. This provides a stronger unstable analogue of Cohen's theorem on the decomposition of stable homotopy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.08842,
  title  = {The higher structure of unstable homotopy groups},
  author = {Samik Basu and David Blanc and Debasis Sen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.08842},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

We would like to thank George Peschke for pointing out that the treatment of rational spaces was missing in Definition 0.2; we have accordingly added this case also to the proof of Theorem 3.1

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:20:19.320Z