Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 24 6 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The homotopy fibre is the homotopy pullback of the path fibration over the target sphere along . The Sullivan fibre-model theorem computes it by taking a relative acyclic model of that path fibration and tensoring it over the target model with the source model. Here the construction can be written out and checked directly.
Adjoin of degree and of degree to the sphere model, withThis is a differential, because . It is an acyclic relative Sullivan algebra: putting makes its two pairs and . The first is a polynomial generator killed by an odd generator; the second is an odd generator killed by an even polynomial generator. Each pair has cohomology only , the second by the ordinary polynomial antiderivative calculation in characteristic zero. Hence this models the contractible path space, and its augmentation models the chosen basepoint.
Tensoring with the projective-space model via the map in part (i) givesThe last differential is necessary: using only would give . Make the invertible generator change , of degree . Since is even,For , all nonzero differentials are decomposable and the generator ordering is Sullivan. Thus no further minimization is needed:For example at this is .
The indecomposable generators of a simply connected finite-type minimal model are dual to its rational homotopy groups. Therefore, for ,These four degrees are distinct. The exact homotopy sequence provides an independent check: has rational homotopy only in degrees , while has it in degrees . For these source and target degrees do not overlap, so the source classes survive in the fibre and the target classes contribute their one-degree-lower connecting classes, giving the same four groups.