Dold spaces in homotopy theory (Q834384): Difference between revisions

The authors of this article study a class of topological spaces, distinguished by A. Dold, which is closed under many usual constructions of homotopy theory. The authors refer to this category of topological spaces as the class of Dold spaces. To be explicit, a Dold space consists of a space \(X\) equipped with a partition of unity by functions \(f_{\alpha}\) such that the inclusion \(S_{\alpha}\hookrightarrow X\) of the support of each \(f_{\alpha}\) is a nullhomotopic map. The class of Dold spaces includes CW-complexes and is obviously closed under homotopy equivalences, but not all Dold spaces are homotopically equivalent to a CW-complex. The authors begin a systematic study of Dold spaces in this article. They prove as a main result that a homotopy colimit of Dold spaces is still a Dold space, that topological realization preserves fibration sequences of simplicial spaces whose base is a path-connected Dold space in each dimension, and they make explicit a condition ensuring that the free algebra over a topological operad forms a Dold space. The article is well-written and includes a survey of basic properties of Dold spaces.