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The orbit category of a group is the category of “all kinds” of orbits of , namely of all suitable coset spaces regarded as G-spaces.
Given a topological group the orbit category (denoted also ) is the category whose
objects are the homogeneous spaces (coset spaces, -orbit types) , where is a closed subgroup of ,
morphisms are the -equivariant continuous functions.
For suitable continuous actions of on a topological space , every orbit of the action is isomorphic to one of the coset spaces (the stabilizer group of any point in the orbit is conjugate to ). This is the sense in which def. gives “the category of all -orbits”.
Def. yields a small topologically enriched category (though of course if is a discrete group, the enrichment of is likewise discrete).
Of course, like any category, it has a skeleton, but as usually defined it is not itself skeletal, since there can exist distinct subgroups and such that .
Warning: This should not be confused with the situation where a group acts on a groupoid so that one obtains the orbit groupoid.
More generally, given a family of subgroups of which is closed under conjugation and taking subgroups one looks at the full subcategory whose objects are those for which .
Sometimes a family, , of subgroups is specified, and then a subcategory of consisting of the where will be considered. If the trivial subgroup is in then many of the considerations of results such as Elmendorf's theorem will go across to the restricted setting.
(orbit category of Z/2Z)
For equivariance group the cyclic group of order 2:
the orbit category looks like this:
i.e.:
Elmendorf's theorem (see there for details) states that the (∞,1)-category of (∞,1)-presheaves on the orbit category are equivalent to the localization of topological spaces with -action at the weak homotopy equivalences on fixed point spaces.
The -orbit category is the slice (∞,1)-category of the global orbit category over the delooping :
This means that in the general context of global equivariant homotopy theory, the orbit category appears as follows.
Rezk-global equivariant homotopy theory:
Orbit categories are used often in the treatment of Mackey functors from the theory of locally compact groups and in the definition of Bredon cohomology.
It appears in equivariant stable homotopy theory, where the -fixed homotopy groups of a space form a presheaf on the homotopy category of the orbit category (e.g. page 8, 9 here).
See at global equivariant homotopy theory.
The notion of the orbit category (for use in equivariant cohomology/Bredon cohomology) is due to
announced in
and there considered specifically for finite groups.
Discussion for any topological group (and further generalization) is considered (together with the model category theoretic proof of Elmendorf's theorem) in:
Textbook accounts:
Tammo tom Dieck, Section I.10 of: Transformation Groups, de Gruyter 1987 (doi:10.1515/9783110858372)
Peter May, Section I.4 of: Equivariant homotopy and cohomology theory CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics, vol. 91, Published for the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences, Washington, DC, 1996 (ISBN:978-0-8218-0319-6, pdf, pdf)
Lecture notes:
For more on the relation to global equivariant homotopy theory see
Last revised on April 9, 2021 at 07:37:41. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.