Homotopy groups of highly connected Poincaré duality complexes (Q2117191)

The authors consider the following case related to the cell attachment problem and Ganea-type results. Suppose that there is a cofibration $A\xrightarrow{f}Y\to Y\cup CA$; there is a map $Y\to Z$ which induces a principal fibration $\Omega Z\to E \to Y$; and the map $Y \to Z$ extends to a map $Y \cup CA \to Z$, inducing a principal fibration $\Omega Z \to E' \xrightarrow{p'} Y \cup CA$. They develop new techniques that relate the action of a principal fibration to relative Whitehead products in order to identify the homotopy type of $E'$ and the homotopy class of $p'$ in terms of the homotopy type of $E$ and the homotopy classes of $p$ and $f$. This requires certain hypotheses on the spaces and maps involved, but these are fulfilled in a wide variety of contexts. The new methods are powerful and should have numerous applications.