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For a Serre fibration over $S^r$, cover the base by a contractible punctured sphere and a contractible ball. Excision relative to the preimage of the punctured sphere identifies the relative pair with the product of $F$ and $(D^r,S^{r-1})$ up to homotopy. The base pair has a single free homology group in degree $r$, so the Künneth theorem gives the displayed shift without a torsion term. The relative long exact sequence then gives $\cdots \to H_i(F)\to H_i(E)\to H_{i-r}(F)\to H_{i-1}(F)\to \cdots$. The connecting map retains the twisting of the original Serre fibration.

If $X$ and $A$ are simply connected and the pair is $(r-1)$-connected, with $r\ge 3$, its first possible nonzero relative homotopy group maps isomorphically to relative integral homology. This lets a basis of a free relative homology group be realized by attaching disks.

Cut a knot exterior along a Seifert surface and stack copies to form its infinite cyclic cover. Linking-dual generators for the homology of the cut-open piece give the positive and negative inclusion matrices $V$ and $V^T$ in row convention. The gluing relations therefore have matrix $tV-V^T$. The H0 gluing map is multiplication by $t-1$ and is injective, so these relations present the entire Alexander module of a knot. Its order is the determinant, up to a Laurent unit.

A class of abelian groups closed under isomorphisms, subgroups, quotients and extensions. For the homotopical Serre-class theorems one also uses tensor/Tor closure and homology closure for Eilenberg–MacLane spaces. A homomorphism is an isomorphism modulo the class when its kernel and cokernel lie in the class.

The class of all finitely generated abelian groups has the closure properties needed for the Hurewicz theorem modulo a Serre class. In a simply connected space, degreewise membership of homotopy groups and integral homology groups in this class is equivalent.

A simply connected CW complex of finite type has finitely generated homotopy groups in every degree. More generally, finite generation of its integral homology groups in each degree suffices. This is a finiteness theorem, not a claim that the groups are finite. A finite fundamental group allows the same conclusion after passing to a universal cover with finite type: a finite number of base cells lifts to a finite number of covering cells in each degree. It permits higher homotopy to be killed with finitely many cell attachments per dimension.

The chain complex whose degree-$n$ group is freely generated over $R$ by the singular simplices $\sigma :{\Delta }^n\to X$. Its boundary is the alternating sum of restrictions to codimension-one faces. The homology of this complex is singular homology.

For an open cover $\mathcal{U}$ of a space $X$, let $C_{\ast }^{\mathcal{U}}(X)$ be the subgroup generated by singular simplices whose images lie in a single member of the cover. It is a chain complex, and its inclusion into the full singular chain complex induces an isomorphism on homology.

For a finite chain, enough iterations of barycentric subdivision make every simplex small: pull the cover back to each compact standard simplex and use its Lebesgue number. The subdivision operator commutes with the boundary and is related to the identity by the standard subdivision chain homotopy, which keeps each produced simplex inside its original image. Therefore any cycle becomes homologous to a small cycle, proving surjectivity.

If a small cycle $z$ bounds a full chain $b$, choose $N$ so that ${\mathrm{Sd}}^{N}b$ is small. Write ${\mathrm{Sd}}^N-1=\partial Q+Q\partial$. Since the homotopy preserves simplex images, $Qz$ is also small. Then $z=\partial ({\mathrm{Sd}}^{N}b-Qz)$ is a small boundary, proving injectivity. This is the chain-level locality input in the proof of the Mayer–Vietoris sequence.

Collapse the indicated standard skeleton to a point. Besides its basepoint, the quotient has one cell in dimensions $k+1$ through $m$. Its integral cellular boundary is two in even dimensions and zero in odd dimensions. Steenrod operations on its relative cohomology are inherited from real projective space.

If $X$ is simply connected and $h_{\ast }:{\pi }_{\ast }(X)\otimes \mathbb{Q}\to {\tilde{H}}_{\ast }(X;\mathbb{Q})$ is onto, choose a homogeneous homology basis and representing sphere maps into $X_{\mathbb{Q}}$. Their wedge sum gives a rational homology equivalence, hence a rational homotopy equivalence by the rational Whitehead theorem. All positive cup products therefore vanish. In a minimal model, the induced map from cohomology to the indecomposable quotient is injective; replacing a set of generators by cocycle representatives produces a quasi-isomorphism to the square-zero cohomology algebra, proving formality of a topological space.

For an oriented rank-four real vector bundle $E\to S^4$, its sphere bundle has fibre $S^3$. Let $m=⟨e(E),[S^4]⟩$ be its Euler class evaluated on the orientation class. The Gysin sequence gives integral homology $\mathbb{Z}$ in degrees $0,7$, $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$ in degree $3$, and a copy of $\mathbb{Z}$ in degree $4$ exactly when $m=0$, with all other groups zero. Here $\mathbb{Z}/0\mathbb{Z}=\mathbb{Z}$. A transition function $v\mapsto q^{k}v{q}^l$ on the unit quaternions has Euler number $k+l$, up to an overall orientation sign: evaluating it at a fixed unit vector gives the power map $q\mapsto q^{k+l}$, whose mapping degree is $k+l$. The same homology calculation follows by applying the Mayer–Vietoris sequence to the two trivializations over the hemispheres.

Topological degree is an integer-valued signed count of preimages that is stable under suitable perturbations.

The Tor functor is the homology of a tensor product of modules with a free resolution: ${\mathrm{Tor}}_i^R(M,N)=H_i(F_{\bullet }{\otimes }_{R}N)$ for a free resolution $F_{\bullet }$ of $M$. It measures the failure of tensoring to preserve exact sequences. For a commutative ring, one may resolve either argument; the double complex of the two resolutions proves that both computations agree.

Start with a singular disk whose boundary represents a prescribed nontrivial class in a boundary subsurface. Repeatedly lift it through double covering spaces of regular neighbourhoods of its image. The number of distinct image simplexes strictly increases and is bounded by the number of domain simplexes, so the tower ends. At the top, vanishing first mod-two homology forces every boundary component to be a sphere. An embedded disk can then be constructed and projected down the tower. Resolving double curves preserves a boundary class outside a chosen normal subgroup, giving an embedded compression disk at the bottom.

The universal cover of a connected closed manifold of dimension three with finite fundamental group is a closed simply connected three-manifold. It is orientable, since its orientation character has trivial domain. Its first integral homology vanishes, and the universal coefficient theorem for cohomology then gives $H^1=0$. Integral Poincare duality gives $H_2=H^1=0$, while $H_0$ and $H_3$ are $\mathbb{Z}$. Thus it is an integral homology sphere. This proof does not require classifying simply connected three-manifolds.