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Dec 11, 2013 at 20:09 vote accept Ryan Thorngren
Nov 24, 2013 at 15:06 comment added Urs Schreiber You need to do the homotopy pullback in higher stacks. (This is what the boldface of the "B" is meant to remind us of.) Of course the statement does remain true under geometric realization as a statement about homotopy pullbacks in homotopy types of topological spaces, too.
Nov 24, 2013 at 4:38 comment added Ryan Thorngren Hi Urs. Is it true that the ordinary loopspace $\Omega \mathbf{B}^{d+1} U(1) = \mathbf{B}^d U(1)$, or in general does one need to use a smooth homotopy pullback?
Aug 7, 2013 at 10:38 comment added Urs Schreiber ...for instance the smooth 2-group $\mathbf{B}U(1)$ is equivalent to that given by the crossed module $\mathbf{B}[\mathbb{Z} \to \mathbb{R}] = [\mathbb{Z} \to \mathbb{R} \to 1]$ (all under Dold-Kan).
Aug 7, 2013 at 10:38 comment added Urs Schreiber Okay, so what you have in mind now seems to be the presentation of the group $U(1)$ as equivalently the 2-group that comes from the crossed module $[\mathbb{Z} \hookrightarrow \mathbb{R}]$. A cocycle in this latter 2-group is given by elements in $\mathbb{R}$ that on triple intersections differ by an element in $\mathbb{Z}$. This equivalent 2-group is also one way to see that the geometric realization of $U(1)$ is $B \mathbb{Z} = [\mathbb{Z} \to 1]$, because $\mathbb{R}$ is topologically contractible. Morever, all this remains true under arbitrary further delooping. So for instance...
Aug 7, 2013 at 8:03 comment added Ryan Thorngren Thanks, Urs. Let me see if I understand you. $BA$ is typically a group up to homotopy, and for Lie groups, every element is homotopic to the identity. However, choosing such a homotopy for every element is going to introduce some strange relations. For example, if elements $a$ of $U(1)$ are cancelled out using the homotopy $h_a$ that just rotates clockwise without any extra winding, then $h_a h_b$ differs from $h_{ab}$ by some element in $\pi_1(U(1)) = \mathbb{Z}$, and this is the relationship between $\pi_1$ and the H-space structure. These homotopies are the cohesion $\Pi$ cares about.
Aug 7, 2013 at 7:51 history edited Urs Schreiber CC BY-SA 3.0
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Aug 7, 2013 at 7:42 history answered Urs Schreiber CC BY-SA 3.0