Some anomalous examples of lifting spaces (Q1709067)

Any continuous map \(p: L\to X\) induces a map \(p_*\) between the spaces of continuous paths from \([0,1]\) to the topological spaces \(L\) and \(X\), and \(p\) is said to be a lifting projection if the commutative diagram obtained by the evaluation map at \(0\) and the maps \(p_*\) and \(p\) is a pull-back in the category of topological spaces. A lifting space of \(X\) is then a lifting projection \(p: L\to X\). It is classical that for a well-behaved space (a locally path-connected semi-locally simply connected space) the notion of covering space coincides with the notion of lifting space. Here some aspects of the poorly-behaved theory are explored, with constructions of examples of lifting spaces that cannot be obtained as inverse limits of covering spaces. It is argued that the `bestiary' of examples constructed should be viewed as prototypical examples of obstructions and caveats needed to be examined in order to build a classification of lifting spaces.