T-homotopy and refinement of observation. IV. Invariance of the underlying homotopy type (Q851539)

Higher dimensional automata (HDA) model the execution of concurrent processes. The execution trace of a set of concurrent processes is a path in a cube of dimension the number of processes. In modeling deadlocks and unreachable states one is led to the notion of dihomotopy which is a deformation of one trace into an equivalent one. To represent the notion that two such automata are equivalent the author earlier in [Homology Homotopy Appl. 5, No. 1, 549-599, electronic only (2003; Zbl 1069.55008)] introduced the notion of a T-homotopy equivalence. An HDA can be modeled as an element in the category \textbf{Flow} of flows. The author describes a functor \( {\text \mathbf Flow} \longrightarrow {\mathbf{Ho}}({\mathbf{Top}})\) from the category of flows to the homotopy category of topological spaces. The main result of the paper is that a \(T\)-homotopy equivalence \(f: X \longrightarrow Y\) induces an isomorphism \(\mid f \mid \, : \,\mid X \mid \longrightarrow \mid Y \mid\) in \(\mathbf{Ho}(\text\textbf{Top})\). The proof make heavy use of the notion of a Reedy category. Although part of a series the paper can be read without having read the earlier papers.