Higher Galois theory (Q1703598)

Classical Galois theory is well known to correspond, conceptually, to the theory of covering spaces and, in [\textit{A. Grothendieck} (ed.) and \textit{M. Raynaud}, Séminaire de géométrie algébrique du Bois Marie 1960/61 (SGA 1), dirigé par Alexander Grothendieck. Augmenté de deux exposés de M. Raynaud. Revêtements étales et groupe fondamental. Exposés I à XIII. (Seminar on algebraic geometry at Bois Marie 1960/61 (SGA 1), directed by Alexander Grothendieck. Enlarged by two reports of M. Raynaud. Ètale coverings and fundamental group). Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag (1971; Zbl 0234.14002)], Grothendieck showed how that could be used to give a rich theory of fundamental group(oid)s, actions, etc. in an algebraic geometric context, linking analogues of covering spaces, principal bundles / torsors, fibred categories and schemes. Later Grothendieck, in his `letter to Quillen' extended this rich theory to a sketched theory of \(n\)-stacks. replacing covering spaces (interpreted as locally constant sheaves of sets) by locally constant \textit{stacks} of \(n\)-types. (The link between these and (non-Abelian) cohomology had already been sketched out in his letter to Larry Breen some years earlier.) The resulting outline of a possible theory, based on an \(\infty\)-category theoretic analogue of sheaves, actions etc., and given in the long manuscript `Pursuing Stacks', gave a basis for a lot of explorative research, and, in particular, for \textit{J. Lurie} [Higher topos theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2009; Zbl 1175.18001)] who gave what has become the main source for ideas and methods for the study of \(\infty\)-categorical analogues of lots of the classical theory. (Note that a working knowledge of the early parts of that source is needed for a full appreciation of the paper under review here.) From this point of view, classical Galois theory can be seen to state that the étale topos, \(\mathfrak{X}\), of a field, \(k\), is equivalent to the topos of \(G\)-sets for \(G\) the absolute Galois group, \(\mathrm{Gal}(k)\), of \(k\), and thus to the classifying topos of that group. In general, \(\mathrm{Gal}(k)\) is, however, not just a group, but rather is a pro-finite group and can be better viewed as an inverse system / pro-object in the category of (finite) groups, so the classifying `space', \(\mathrm{BGal}(k^s/k)\), is equivalent, as a pro-groupoid, to the fundamental pro-groupoid, \(\Pi_1\mathfrak{X}\), of \(\mathfrak{X}\). Working with Lurie's higher topos theory, in this paper the author generalises the above theory to arbitrary dimensions, giving interpretations of \(\Pi_\infty\mathfrak{X}\), the fundamental \(\infty\)-groupoid of a topos \(\mathfrak{X}\). It is shown that locally constant sheaves in a locally \((n-1)\)-connected \(n\)-topos are equivalent to representations / actions of its fundamental pro-\(n\)-groupoid, all this for suitable interpretations of the terms here left undefined. The paper makes the link between this theory and the now classical theories of étale homotopy (Artin-Mazur and Friedlander), plus in a topological context, the theory of shape, as given by Mardešić and Segal, and this reviewer.