Related papers: The positive fundamental group of ${\rm Sp}(2n)$

In this paper, we examine the homotopy classes of positive loops in Sp(2) and Sp(4). We show that two positive loops are homotopic if and only if they are homotopic through positive loops.

We study the global topology of the space $\mathcal L$ of loops of contactomorphisms of a non-orderable closed contact manifold $(M^{2n+1}, \alpha)$. We filter $\mathcal L$ by a quantitative measure of the ``positivity'' of the loops and…

Let M be a closed simply connected n-manifold of positive sectional curvature. We determine its homeomorphism or homotopic type if M also admits an isometric elementary p-group action of large rank. Our main results are: There exists a…

For $n\geq 2$ we compute the homotopy groups of $(n-1)$-connected closed manifolds of dimension $(2n+1)$. Away from the finite set of primes dividing the order of the torsion subgroup in homology, the $p$-local homotopy groups of $M$ are…

We study the homotopy type of the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on high-dimensional compact spin manifolds. Hitchin used the fact that there are no harmonic spinors on a manifold with positive scalar curvature to construct a…

It is an old conjecture, that finite $H$-spaces are homotopy equivalent to manifolds. Here we prove that this conjecture is true for loop spaces. Actually, we show that every quasi finite loop space is equivalent to a stably parallelizable…

We show that for n>=3 the symplectic group Sp(n) is as a 2-compact group determined up to isomorphism by the isomorphism type of its maximal torus normalizer. This allows us to determine the integral homotopy type of Sp(n) among connected…

Two locally generic maps f,g : M^n --> R^{2n-1} are regularly homotopic if they lie in the same path-component of the space of locally generic maps. Our main result is that if n is not 3 and M^n is a closed n-manifold then the regular…

We prove that many spaces of positive scalar curvature metrics have the homotopy type of infinite loop spaces. Our result in particular applies to the path component of the round metric inside $\mathcal{R}^+ (S^d)$ if $d \geq 6$. To achieve…

Let $M$ be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ has non-trivial higher homotopy…

A positive path in the linear symplectic group $\Sp(2n)$ is a smooth path which is everywhere tangent to the positive cone. These paths are generated by negative definite (time-dependent) quadratic Hamiltonian functions on Euclidean space.…

In this note we prove that a positive multiple of each even-dimensional integral homology class of a compact symplectic manifold $(M^{2n}, \omega)$ can be represented as the difference of the fundamental classes of two symplectic…

After summarising the physical approach leading to twisted homotopy and after developing the cohomological approach further with respect to our previous work we propose a third alternative approach to twisted homotopy based on group…

This paper concerns complete noncompact manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. Roughly, we say that M has the loops to infinity property if given any noncontractible closed curve, C, and given any compact set, K, there exists a closed…

In the first part of this paper we show that path categories are enriched over groupoids, in a way that is compatible with a suitable 2-category of path categories. In the second part we introduce a new notion of homotopy exponential and…

We show that the homotopy type of a finite oriented Poincar\'{e} 4-complex is determined by its quadratic 2-type provided its fundamental group is finite and has a dihedral Sylow 2-subgroup. By combining with results of Hambleton-Kreck and…

For $n\geq 2$ we consider $(n-1)$-connected closed manifolds of dimension at most $(3n-2)$. We prove that away from a finite set of primes, the $p$-local homotopy groups of $M$ are determined by the dimension of the space of indecomposable…

Main Theorem (3.3): Let $M$ be a compact four-dimensional manifold either with curvature, positive on complex isotropic two-planes, or self-dual of positive scalar curvature. If $\pi_1 (M)$ admits a nontrivial unitary representation, and…

Every small category $C$ has a classifying space $BC$ associated in a natural way. This construction can be extended to other contexts and set up a fruitful interaction between categorical structures and homotopy types. In this paper we…

Smooth structures on high dimensional manifolds are classified by maps to the infinite loop space $TOP/O$. The homotopy groups of this space are known to be finite. Given a compact Lie group $G$, this space can be regarded as an equivariant…