On fundamental groups with the quotient topology (Q2018829)

The subject of the paper is the fundamental group of locally complicated spaces, sometimes also called wild spaces. Such spaces typically fail to be locally path connected, locally contractible or semi-locally simply connected. A generic example would be the Hawaiian Earring. On one hand, the generalizations of covering spaces motivated a number of properties related to loops in a space. Such properties represent conditions or obstructions to the existence of various covering spaces. Examples include homotopically Hausdorff spaces, homotopically path-Hausdorff spaces and \(\pi_1\)-shape injective spaces. On the other hand, one may equip the loop space with the compact open topology and consider the obvious quotient topology \(\pi_1^{qtop}\) on the fundamental group. Such topology turns out to be useful in distinguishing spaces even though it does not make the fundamental group a topological group. The content of this paper is to relate the separation properties of the fundamental group equipped with the quotient topology and the above mentioned properties related to generalizations of covering spaces. Numerous results include the following: \( \bullet\) A space is homotopically path-Hausdorff iff \(\pi_1^{qtop}\) is \(T_1.\) \( \bullet\) A space is \(\pi_1\)-shape injective iff \(\pi_1^{qtop}\) is invariantly separated. \( \bullet\) A condition implying that \(\pi_1^{qtop}\) is a \(T_4\) topological group.