The topological fundamental group and free topological groups

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Abstract: The topological fundamental group pi1top is a homotopy invariant finer than the usual fundamental group. It assigns to each space a quasitopological group and is discrete on spaces which admit universal covers. For an arbitrary space X, we compute the topological fundamental group of the suspension space Sigma(X+) and find that pi1top(Sigma(X+)) either fails to be a topological group or is the free topological group on the path component space of X. Using this computation, we provide an abundance of counterexamples to the assertion that all topological fundamental groups are topological groups. A relation to free topological groups allows us to reduce the problem of characterizing Hausdorff spaces X for which pi1top(Sigma(X+)) is a Hausdorff topological group to some well known classification problems in topology.


The topological fundamental group \(\pi_1^{top}(X,x)\) of a pointed space \((X,x)\) is the fundamental group \(\pi_1(X,x)\) endowed with the topology arising from the quotient topology of the loop space. In [\textit{P. Fabel}, ``Multiplication is discontinuous in the Hawaiian earring group (with the quotient topology), \url{arXiv:0909.3086v2}], it was shown that the Hawaiian earing group \(\pi_1^{top}(\mathbb{H}\mathbb{E})\) fails to be a topological group. In this paper, for an arbitrary space \(X\), the topological fundamental group of the suspension space \(\Sigma(X_+)\) is computed and it is found that \(\pi^{top}_1(\sum(X_+))\) either fails to be a topological group or is the free topological group on the path component space of \(X\). Using this computation some counterexamples such that topological fundamental groups are not topological groups are given.



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