Coformality and rational homotopy groups of spaces of long knots (Q932916)

A smooth embedding \(f:{\mathbb R} \to {\mathbb R}^d\) is called a long knot if it coincides with a fixed linear embedding outside of a compact subset of \(\mathbb R\). Let \(\text{Emb}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^d\) (resp. \(\text{Imm}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d}\)) denote the space consisting of all long knots (resp. long immersions) \(f:{\mathbb R} \to {\mathbb R}^d\) with the weak \(C^{\infty}\)-topology, and let \(\overline{\text{Emb}}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^d\) be the homotopy fiber of the inclusion \(\text{Emb}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d}\to \text{Imm}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^d\). Since it is known that there is a homotopy equivalence \(\overline{\text{Emb}}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d} \simeq \text{Emb}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d}\times \Omega^{2S}{}^{d-1}\), the study of the homotopy type of \(\overline{\text{Emb}}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^d\) reduces to that of \(\text{Emb}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^d\). It is also known that there is a certain cosimplicial space \({\mathcal K}^{\bullet}= \{{\mathcal K}^{n}\}_{n\geq 0}\) whose homotopy totalization \(\text{Tot}\, ({\mathcal K}^{\bullet})\) is homotopy equivalent to \(\overline{\text{Emb}}({\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d})\) if \(d\geq 4\) and that each \({\mathcal K}_n\) \((n\geq 0)\) has the homotopy type of the configuration space of ordered \(n\)-tuples of distinct points in \({\mathbb R}^d\). In this paper, the authors study the rational homotopy Bousfield-Kan type spectral sequence \(E^1_{p,q}= (J\pi_q({\mathcal K}^{-p})\otimes {\mathbb Q} \Rightarrow \pi_{p+q}\overline{\text{Emb}}\, {\mathbb R}, {\mathbb R}^{d} \otimes {\mathbb Q}\) and they prove that this spectral sequence collapses at the \(E^2\)-term. To prove this, first they observe that the little \(d\)-disk operad looks like a coformal operad and they build another coformal cosimplicial space \(| \chi^{\bullet}|\) which is equivalent to \({\mathcal K}^{\bullet}\) as far as the Bousfield-Kan spectral sequence and totalization are concerned. Then their main theorem is proved by showing that the rational homotopy Bousfield-Kan spectral sequence of a coformal cosimplicial space collapes at the \(E^2\)-term.