Saturday, 10 January 2009

homotopy theory - The Dold-Thom theorem for infinity categories?

Let $mathcal{M}$ denote the category of finite sets and monomorphisms, and let $mathcal T$ denote the category of based spaces. For a based space $X in mathcal T$, one has a canonical funtor $S_X : mathcal M rightarrow mathcal T$ defined by ${n} mapsto X^n$. The definition on morphisms is to insert basepoints on the factors which are not in the image of a given monomorphism.



As is well know, the homotopy groups of $mathrm{colim} S_X = SP^infty X$ give the homology of $X$ (this is the Dold-Thom theorem), and the homotopy groups of $mathrm{hocolim} S_X = SP^infty_h X$ given the stable homotopy of $X$.



Is there a model for $SP^infty X$, the ordinary infinite symmetric product, as a homotopy colimit as opposed to a categorical colimit?



The motivation for this question comes from thinking about $infty$-categories. In an $infty$-category, one does not really have a good notion (at least not one that I am aware of) of strict categorical colimits. So I'm wondering if there is, nonetheless, some easily defined functor on the $infty$-category of spaces which will let us calculate ordinary homology. In short, is there any $infty$-categorical analog of the Dold-Thom theorem?



Update: Following up on André's remark it seems using the orbit category is heading in the right direction, at least for the $n$-th approximations. I'll just quickly sketch what I have so far:



Let $mathcal O(Sigma_n)$ denote the orbit category. The objects are the homogeneous (discrete) spaces $Sigma_n/H$ (with left actions) as $H$ runs over all the subgroups of $Sigma_n$, and the morphisms are the $Sigma_n$-equivariant maps. There is a canonical functor $$Sigma_n rightarrow mathcal O(Sigma_n)^{op}$$ where we regard $Sigma_n$ as a category with one object as usual.



Given a $Sigma_n$ space $X$, right Kan extension along this inclusion produces a $mathcal O(Sigma_n)^{op}$ diagram $tilde X$ defined by $$tilde X(Sigma_n/H) = X^H$$ It turns out that the above inclusion is final so that it induces an isomorphism of colimits. Hence $mathrm{colim}_{mathcal O(Sigma_n)} tilde X cong X_{Sigma_n}$, i.e., the coinvariants. It's also not hard to see that the undercategories are copies of $BSigma_n$, hence not contractible, so we don't expect an equivalence of homotopy colimits, which is good.



On the other hand, I can now show that when $X$ is discrete, the canonical map $$mathrm{hocolim} tilde X rightarrow mathrm{colim} tilde X$$ is an equivalence. My methods here do not generalize to all spaces, so if someone has a reference for why this is true in general, that would be much appreciated. (I think something like this must appear in May's book on equivariant homotopy theory if it's true, but I did not have it available this weekend.)



The remaining part would be to let $n rightarrow infty$, but somehow this seems like it should not be too bad. (Something like: make a functor $mathcal M rightarrow mathcal Cat$ by $n mapsto mathcal O(Sigma_n)$. Take the Grothendieck construction. Some natural diagram on this category might give the right answer.)

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