Related papers: On the configuration space topology in general rel…
I consider configuration spaces for $N$-body problems, gauge theories and for GR in both geometrodynamical and Ashtekar variables forms, including minisuperspace and inhomogeneous perturbations thereabout in the former case. These examples…
In this article we introduce the space of configurations of commuting elements in a topological group and show that it satisfies rational homological stability for the sequences of unitary, special unitary and symplectic groups. We also…
Following Thurston's geometrisation picture in dimension three, we study geometric manifolds in a more general setting in arbitrary dimensions, with respect to the following problems: (i) The existence of maps of non-zero degree (domination…
This study investigates the exact geometry of the configuration space in three-dimensional rotational motion planning. A parameterization of configuration space obstacles is derived for a given triangulated or ball-approximated scene with…
For a topological group $G$ let $E_{\textsf{com}}(G)$ be the total space of the universal transitionally commutative principal $G$-bundle as defined by Adem--Cohen--Torres-Giese. So far this space has been most studied in the case of…
We continue our investigation of the configuration space of general relativity begun in I (gr-qc/9411009). Here we examine the Hamiltonian constraint when the spatial geometry is momentarily static (MS). We show that MS configurations…
We consider the space of all configurations of finitely many (potentially nested) circles in the plane. We prove that this space is aspherical, and compute the fundamental group of each of its connected components. It turns out these…
The configuration space of general relativity is superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics modulo diffeomorphisms. However, it has been argued that the configuration space for gravity should be conformal superspace - the space of…
Consider the configuration spaces of manifolds. An influential theorem of McDuff, Segal and Church shows that the (co)homology of the unordered configuration space is independent of number of points in a range of degree called the stable…
A generalized-homology bordism-theory is constructed, such that for certain manifold homotopy stratified sets (MHSS; Quinn-spaces) homeomorphism-invariant geometric fundamental-classes exist. The construction combines three ideas: Firstly,…
Finitely many hypersurfaces are removed from unordered configuration spaces of $n$ points in $\mathbb{C}$ to obtain a fibration over unordered configuration spaces of $n-1$ complex points. Fundamental groups of these restricted…
In this paper we investigate the canonical structure of diffeomorphism invariant phase spaces for spatially locally homogeneous spacetimes with 3-dimensional compact closed spaces. After giving a general algorithm to express the…
Let V be a representation space of a finite group G. We determine the group structure of the first homology of the equivariant diffeomorphism group of V. Then we can apply it to the calculation of the first homology of the corresponding…
We continue our examination of the constraints in spherically symmetric general relativity begun in I (gr-qc/9411009) and II (gr-qc/9411010). We extend to general configurations with $J\ne 0$ the analysis of II which treated a moment of…
For closed oriented manifolds, we establish oriented homotopy invariance of higher signatures that come from the fundamental group of a large class of orientable 3-manifolds, including the ``piecewise geometric'' ones in the sense of…
The structure of topological spaces is analysed here through the lenses of fibrous preorders. Each topological space has an associated fibrous preorder and those fibrous preorders which return a topological space are called spacial. A…
We prove a transversality "lifting property" for compactified configuration spaces as an application of the multijet transversality theorem: the submanifold of configurations of points on an arbitrary submanifold of Euclidean space may be…
We study orbit configuration spaces $\mathrm{Cf}_G(n,\mathbb{P}^1_*)$ obtained from the action of a finite homography group $G$ on $\mathbb{P}^1$. We construct a flat connection on the orbit space with values in a Lie algebra…
We express the rational cohomology of the unordered configuration space of a compact oriented manifold as a representation of its mapping class group in terms of a weight-decomposition of the rational cohomology of the mapping space from…
This expository article describes applications of topological configuration spaces to the control of robotic systems. In particular, we review recent work by the authors on configuration spaces of graphs. These are lovely spaces: we show…