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Invariance of Torsion and the Borsuk Conjecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

T. A. Chapman*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
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The following results of Whitehead and Wall are well-known applications of the algebraic K-theoretic functors K0 and K1 to basic homotopy questions in topology.

THEOREM 1 [20]. If f : XY is a homotopy equivalence between compact CW complexes, then there is a torsion τ(ƒ) in the algebraically-defined Whitehead group Wh π1(Y) which vanishes if and only if f is a simple homotopy equivalence.

THEOREM 2 [18]. If X is an arbitrary space which is finitely dominated (i.e., homotopically dominated by a compact polyhedron), then there is an obstruction σ(X) in the algebraically-defined reduced projective class group which vanishes if and only if X is homotopy equivalent to some compact polyhedron.

If we direct sum over components, then the above statements make good sense even if the spaces involved are not connected.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1980

References

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