Configuration spaces of labeled points on a circle with two anchors (Q2673851)

Let \(X\) be a non-empty topological space, let \(S\) be a set of \(m\) points in \(X\), \(m \geq 0\), and let \(n\) be an arbitrary positive integer. An anchored configuration space, denoted \(\Sigma(X, S, n)\), is defined as the subspace of the direct product \(X^n\), consisting of all tuples \((x_1,\dots, x_n )\), such that \(S \subseteq \{x_1, \dots, x_n \}\). When \(|S|=2\), the space \(\Sigma(S^1,S,n)= \Sigma_2(S^1, n)\) has a cubical structure, where the cubes are tuples \((A,B,C,D)\) such that \begin{itemize} \item both \(A\) and \(C\) are non empty sets; \item \(A\cup B\cup C \cup D = \{1,\dots, n\}\) and \item the dimension of the cube is \(|B|+|D|\). \end{itemize} The cubical boundary operator over \( \mathbb{Z}_2\) is given by \[ \partial (A,B,C,D) =\sum_{x\in B} (A+x,B-x,C,D) +(A,B-x,C+x,D) + \sum_{x\in D} (A+x,B,C,D-x)+(A,B,C+x,D-x) \] The author uses discrete Morse theory and gives an acyclic discrete vector field \(\mathcal{M}\) on this space with the following property: \textbf{Theorem 1.} The boundary operator in the Morse chain complex is trivial. This allows him to obtain the Betti numbers by counting the amount of critical cells in \(\mathcal{M}\). \textbf{Theorem 2.} The Betti numbers of \(\Sigma_2 (S^1,n)\) are given by the following formulae: \begin{align*} &b_d= \binom{n}{d}\text{ for } 0\leq d\leq n-3 \\ &b_{n-2}=2^n+ \binom{n-1}{2}-2 \end{align*} Finally, the author uses again discrete Morse theory to obtain an explicit homology basis for the space \(\Sigma_2 (S^1,n)\).