Smash product of CW pairs Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-11-05
For CW pairs and , write their product pair asUse the compactly generated product, equivalently the weak CW complex topology on products of cells. For arbitrary infinite CW complexes this can be finer than the ordinary product topology. The ordinary product topology already agrees when one factor is locally compact, or when both factors have countably many cells; in particular there is no distinction for finite CW complexes.[ref]
The quotient of this pair is . Setwise, the collapsed subset is exactly the set of pairs with at least one coordinate in its collapsed subspace; the compatible quotient constructions give the homeomorphism in the compactly generated space convention. In a multiplicative generalized cohomology theory, external products of relative classes of degrees lie in degree for this pair. Pullback along a diagonal map gives the relative cup product.