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We have decided to discontinue the publication of preprints on our preprint server end of 2024. The publication culture within mathematics has changed so much due to the rise of repositories such as ArXiV (www.arxiv.org) that we are encouraging all institute members to make their preprints available there. An institute's repository in its previous form is, therefore, unnecessary. The preprints published to date will remain available here, but we will not add any new preprints here.
Covering group theory for topological groups
Valerii N. Berestovskii and Conrad PlautAbstract
We develop a covering group theory for a large category of "coverable" topological groups, which includes all metrizable, connected, locally connected groups, and even many totally disconnected groups. Our covering group theory produces a categorial notion of fundamental group. In contrast to the traditional theory, our fundamental group is a naturally a topological group, and is the inverse limit of discrete groups. Our work also reveals a link between the fundamental group and global extension properties of local group homomorphisms. We provide methods for computing the fundamental group of inverse limits and dense subgroups or completions of coverable groups. The paper includes a number of examples and open problems.
- Received:
- 09.02.99
- Published:
- 09.02.99
- MSC Codes:
- 22A05, 22D05
- Keywords:
- topological group, universal covering group, fundamental group