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(also nonabelian homological algebra)
Context
Basic definitions
Stable homotopy theory notions
Constructions
Lemmas
Homology theories
Theorems
algebraic topology – application of higher algebra and higher category theory to the study of (stable) homotopy theory
Under the Dold-Kan correspondence, ∞-groupoids with strict abelian group structure (modeled by Kan complexes that are simplicial abelian groups) are identified with non-negatively graded chain complexes of abelian groups
The homology groups of a chain complex of abelian groups are the image under this identification of the homotopy groups of the corresponding ∞-groupoids. More details on this are at chain homology and cohomology.
So at least for the case of chain complexes of abelian groups we have the slogan
homology = homotopy under Dold-Kan correspondence
Of course historically the development of concepts was precisely the opposite: chain homology is an old fundamental concept in homological algebra that is simpler to deal with than simplicial homotopy groups. The computational simplification for chain complexes is what makes the Dold-Kan correspondence useful after all.
Conceptually, however, it can be useful to understand homology as a special kind of homotopy. This is maybe most vivid in the dual picture: cohomology derives its name from that fact that chain homology and cohomology are dual concepts. But later generalizations of cohomology to generalized (Eilenberg-Steenrod) cohomology and further to nonabelian cohomology showed that the restricted notion of homology is an insufficient dual model for cohomology: what cohomology is really dual to is the more general concept of homotopy. More on this is at cohomotopy and Eckmann-Hilton duality.
The category of abelian groups is in particular an abelian category. We can define chain complexes and their homology in any abelian category .
Let be an abelian category and let
be a chain complex in . For each integer this induces the following diagram of kernels, cokernels and images
the homology of in degree is the object
In the special case that is the category of abelian groups, or of vector spaces, this definition reduces to the more familiar simpler statement:
the -th homology group of the chain complex is the quotient group
By the Brown representability theorem every spectrum induces a generalized (Eilenberg-Steenrod) cohomology theory, and dually a generalized homology theory.
For a topological space and a spectrum, the generalized homology of spectrum of with coefficients in is
where on the right we have the smash product of spectra with the suspension spectrum of and on the left we abbreviate this to the (∞,1)-tensoring of Spec over Top.
The corresponding homology groups are the homotopy groups of this spectrum:
where is the sphere spectrum. For more see generalized homology.
The relation between homology, cohomology and homotopy:
The ingredients of homology and cohomology:
(chain-)homology | (cochain-)cohomology | ||
---|---|---|---|
chain | cochain | ||
cycle | cocycle | ||
boundary | coboundary |
Peter Hilton (ed.) Category Theory, Homology Theory and Their Applications,
vol 1: Lecture Notes in Mathematics 86, Springer (1969) [[doi:10.1007/BFb0079380](https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0079380)]
vol 2: Lecture Notes in Mathematics 92, Springer (1969) [[doi:10.1007/BFb0080761](https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0080761)]
vol 3: Lecture Notes in Mathematics 99, Springer (1969) [[doi:10.1007/BFb0081959](https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0081959)]
Last revised on August 25, 2023 at 08:42:50. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.