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For a topological group acting on a topological space , its Borel construction or Borel space is another topological space , also known as the homotopy quotient. In many cases, its ordinary cohomology is the -equivariant cohomology of .
For a topological space, a topological group and a continuous -action (a topological G-space), the Borel construction of is the topological space , hence quotient of the product of with the total space of the -universal principal bundle by the diagonal action of on both.
Analogously, for a simplicial group and a simplicial group action, its Borel construction is the quotient
of the Cartesian product of with the universal principal simplicial complex by the diagonal action of on these.
The simplicial Borel construction (1) is a right Quillen functor in a Quillen equivalence
from the projective model structure on simplicial group actions to the slice model structure of the classical model structure on simplicial sets over the simplicial classifying space of .
(DDK 80, Prop. 2.3, Prop. 2.4, see at Borel model structure for more)
As an example:
If the underlying simplicial set is a Kan complex, then the quotient projection from the Borel construction (1) to the simplicial classifying space is a Kan fibration
This follows because the morphism is the image of the terminal morphism under the right Quillen functor from Prop. , hence is a fibration if is.
In the following, we write for the convenient category of compactly generated weak Hausdorff spaces.
Let
be a topological group which is well-pointed in that the inclusion of the neutral element is a Hurewicz cofibration hence a closed cofibration.
be a (cgwh)-topological G-space.
The sequence (2) is the image under geometric realization of simplicial topological spaces of the sequence of simplicial topological spaces
which, in turn, is the image under passage to nerves of the sequence of topological groupoids
with the action groupoid in the middle and the delooping groupoid on the right.
Therefore, by the general respect of geometric realization for homotopy fiber products (this Prop.) it is now sufficient to observe that
the simplicial topological spaces appearing in (3) are all good (so that their geometric realization models their homotopy colimit);
the sequence (3) of simplicial topological spaces is degreewise a homotopy fiber sequence of topological spaces;
the morphism is a homotopy Kan fibration (see here).
For the first condition observe that the degeneracy maps of the nerve of an action groupoid are all of the form , hence are closed cofibrations (by this Example).
For the second condition, observe that projections are evidently Serre fibrations whose ordinary fiber is , so that is a homotopy fiber sequence (by this Prop.).
For the third point, notice that in the present case the horn-filling map here are all isomorphisms, hence certainly surjective on connected components.
(Borel construction on principal bundle is equivalent to plain quotient)
Assume that:
and are both connected, ;
the coprojection is a locally trivial -fiber bundle (hence a -principal bundle),
then the topological Borel construction is weakly homotopy equivalent to the plain quotient space:
We need to show that the comparison morphism induces an isomorphisms on all homotopy groups .
For this is immediate, as passage to connected components is a coequalizer (here) and using that colimits commute with colimits. This implies that both as well as are the singleton set (by the assumption that is connected and since is connected) and hence are isomorphic.
In order to compare the remaining higher homotopy groups, observe that, under the given assumption, with also the coprojection to the Borel construction itself is a locally trivial fiber bundle: Namely from this commuting diagram
one sees that for an open cover of over which trivializes, we have that is an open cover over which the quotient coprojection into the Borel construction trivializes.
But since locally trivial bundles are Serre fibrations (this Prop.), it follows that the above diagram is a morphism of homotopy fiber sequences (by this Prop.), and hence induces a morphism of long exact sequences of homotopy groups, which contains the following segments, for all :
Here the outer vertical morphisms are all isomorphisms by the fact that is a weak homotopy equivalence. Therefore the five lemma (in its generality of possibly non-abelian groups, here) implies that also the middle vertical morphism is an isomorphism, for all .
This Borel construction is naturally understood as being the geometric realization of the topological action groupoid of the action of on :
the nerve of this topological groupoid is the simplicial topological space
Observing that itself as a groupoid has the nerve
(where “” denotes the multiplication action of on itself) and regarding and as topological 0-groupoids ( as a group object in topological 0-groupoids), hence with simplicially constant nerves, we have an isomorphism of simplicial topological spaces
If this is set up in a sufficiently nice category of topological spaces, then, by the discussion at geometric realization of simplicial topological spaces, the geometric realization manifestly takes this to the Borel construction (since, by the discussion there, it preserves the product and the quotient).
If is the topological category associated to the group , then a -space is precisely a Top-enriched functor in a similar fashion to the fact that an R-module is an Ab-enriched functor. If is a -space, the ordinary quotient is the colimit of the diagram associated to and the Borel construction is (a model of) the homotopy colimit of that diagram. This is a reason for calling the Borel construction homotopy quotient in some contexts.
The image of the Borel construction in rational homotopy theory is the Weil model for equivariant de Rham cohomology. See there for more.
As a right Quillen functor on the model structure on simplicial group actions:
Lecture notes in classical topology:
General statement in simplicial homotopy theory of simplicial presheaves:
J. F. Jardine, Stacks and the homotopy theory of simplicial sheaves (pdf)
Thomas Nikolaus, Urs Schreiber, Danny Stevenson, Prop. 3.73 in: Principal -bundles – Presentations, Journal of Homotopy and Related Structures, Volume 10, Issue 3 (2015), pages 565-622 (arXiv:1207.0249, doi:10.1007/s40062-014-0077-4)
The nature of the Borel construction as the geometric realization of the action groupoid is mentioned for instance in
Last revised on July 6, 2022 at 14:50:34. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.