Higher fundamental groupoids for spaces (Q1873735)

The author defines fundamental \(n\)-groupoids for topological spaces. Section 1 deals with the structure of the standard path functor considering the involutive lattice structure of the interval \([0,1]\). The functor of Moore paths, \(\mathbb{P}\), has a similar structure but an associative concatenation. Thus, Section 2 starts with the space \(\mathbb{P}X\) of Moore paths, which produces a cubical object with associative concatenations. A quotient \(\mathcal{P}X\) of the underlying set \(|\mathbb{P}X|\) gives a groupoid called the groupoid of strongly reduced paths. From this, a cubical \(\omega\)-groupoid is derived, and then, the fundamental \(\omega\)-groupoid \(\Pi_{\omega}X\). Finally, the fundamental \(n\)-groupoid is obtained by applying the `reflector' of \(n\)-groupoids. In section 3, the fundamental category of a directed topological space [see \textit{M. Grandis}, Directed Homotopy Theory, I. The fundamental category, Cah. Topologie Géom. Différ. Catég., to appear. Preprint \texttt{http://arXiv.org/abs/math.AT/0111048}] is extended to any dimension, following a treatment parallel to the previous section. The last section compares these constructions with the fundamental categories of (symmetric) simplicial sets, introduced in previous works by the author [see Appl. Categ. Struct. 10, 99-155 (2002; Zbl 0994.55011) and Cah. Topologie Géom. Différ. Catég. 42, 101-136 (2001; Zbl 1006.18014)].