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Charles Rezk
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Added Aug 2016: I've written this up, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.02999

$\def\Hom{\mathrm{Hom}} \def\Map{\mathrm{Map}} \def\ad{\mathrm{ad}}$

I think this is true. I'll sketch a possible proof here. I haven't carefully checked everything, and there are things that need checking. Feel free to do that.

First, we can assume $H=G$: we want to show that $(B_G\Pi)^G\to \mathrm{Map}(BG,B\Pi)$ is an equivalence if $G$ is compact Lie and $\Pi$ is compact Lie and a 1-type.

We might as well consider the induced map on homotopy fibers over the maps to $B\Pi$ (induced by evaluating at the basepoint of $BG$.) That is, we want to show $$ \Hom(G,\Pi) \to \Map_*(BG,B\Pi) $$ is a weak equivalence. Here $\Hom(G,\Pi)$ is topologized as a subspace of $\Map(G,\Pi)$. We know that this is homeomorphic to $\coprod_{[\phi]} \Pi/C_\Pi(\phi(G))$, a coproduct over conjugacy classes of homomorphisms $G\to \Pi$ (see Nearby homomorphisms from compact Lie groups are conjugate).

Given this, it is already clear we get an equivalence when $G$ is compact and connected (reduce to the case where $\Pi$ is a torus). It's not so easy to see why this is so for general $G$: although we can "compute" both sides, the accounting is different and hard to match up.

Here's an attempt at a general proof, based on the ideas which work when $\Pi$ is a torus (which involve the idea of continuous cochains as in Graeme Segal, "Cohomology of topological groups"). It should fit into some already-known technology (cohomology of topological groups with coefficients in a topological 2-group?), but I don't want to bother to figure out what or how.

Consider data consisting of

  • a group $\Pi$ (a compact Lie 1-type as above), with connected component $\Pi_0$ (which is abelian),

  • a vector space $V$,

  • a group homomorphism $\exp\colon V\to \Pi$,

  • an action $\ad\colon \Pi/\Pi_0\to \mathrm{Aut} V$,

  • such that $\exp(\ad(\pi)v)=\pi \exp[v] \pi^{-1}$.

(It's a kind of crossed module.) Given this, define $E(G, (\Pi,V))$ to be the space of pairs $(f,v)$ where $f\colon G\to \Pi$ and $v\colon G\times G\to V$ are continuous maps, satisfying

  • $f(g_1)f(g_2)=\exp[ v(g_1,g_2)] f(g_1g_2)$,
  • $v(g_1,g_2)+v(g_1g_2,g_3)= \ad(f(g_1))v(g_2,g_3) + v(g_1,g_2g_3)$.

(I might want to additionally require a normalization: $f(e)=e$. Or not.)

The examples I have in mind are $E:= E(G, (\Pi, T_e\Pi))$ and $E^0:= E(G, (\Pi,0))$. The claims are as follows.

$E$ is weakly equivalent to $\Map_*(BG,B\Pi)$. To compute the mapping space, you need to climb the cosimplicial space $[k] \mapsto \Map_*(G^k, B\Pi)$. Because $B\Pi$ is a 2-type, you don't need to climb very far. The idea is that if you do this, and you keep in mind facts such as:

  • $\Pi$ is equivalent to $\Omega B\Pi$, and

  • the fibration $(v,\pi)\mapsto (\pi, \exp[v]\pi) \colon V\times\Pi\to \Pi\times \Pi$ is equivalent to the free path fibration $\Map([0,1],\Pi)\to \Pi\times \Pi$,

you see that you get an equivalence. (I came up with the definition of $E$ exactly by doing this.)

That's kind of sketchy.

More concretely: $\Map_*(BG,B\Pi)$ can be identified with the space of maps between pointed simplicial spaces, from $G^\bullet$ to $S_\bullet:=\bigl([n]\mapsto \Map_*(\Delta^n/\mathrm{Sk}_0\Delta^n, B\Pi)\bigr)$. The space $E$ is also a space of maps between such, from $G^\bullet$ to $N_\bullet$, where $N_\bullet$ is a simplicial space built from the crossed module $(\Pi,V)$ (the nerve of the crossed module, as in http://mathoverflow.net/q/86486 ) with $N_n \approx \Pi^n\times V^{\binom{n}{2}}$. It's not to hard to show that $N_\bullet$ and $S_\bullet$ are weakly equivalent Reedy fibrant simplicial spaces; they both receive a map from $\Pi^\bullet$, which exhibits the equivalence. (But note: showing that $N_\bullet$ is Reedy fibrant relies crucially on the fact that $\exp$ is a covering map.)

$E^0$ is homeomorphic to $\Hom(G,\Pi)$. Yup.

The inclusion $E^0\subseteq E$ is a weak equivalence.

To see this, let $C^1:=\Map(G,V)$, as a topological group under pointwise addition. There is an action $C^1\curvearrowright E$, by $u\cdot (f,v)=(f',v')$ where

  • $f'(g) := \exp[u(g)] f(g)$,
  • $v'(g_1,g_2) := u(g_1)-u(g_1g_2) + \ad(f(g_1))u(g_2) + v(g_1,g_2)$.

It's useful to note that for any $(f,v)\in E$, the resulting map $G\xrightarrow{f} \Pi\to \Pi/\Pi_0$ is a homomorphism. Thus we write $E=\coprod E_\gamma$ for $\gamma\in \Hom(G,\Pi/\Pi_0)$, and $C^1$ acts on each $E_\gamma$.

Consider $(f,0)\in E_\gamma^0= E_\gamma\cap E^0$. Note that $u\cdot (f,0)$ has the form $(f',0)$ for some $f'$ if and only if $u\in Z^1_\gamma$, where this is the set of $u\colon G\to V$ such that

  • $u(g_1)-u(g_1g_2) + \ad\gamma(g_1) u(g_2)=0$.

So the action passes to an injective map $C^1\times_{Z^1_\gamma} E^0_\gamma\to E_\gamma$. In fact, it should be a homeomorphism. To see that it's surjective, fix $(f,v)\in E_\gamma$; we need to solve for $u\in C^1$ such that

  • $u(g_1)-u(g_1g_2)+\ad\gamma(g_1)u(g_2)=v(g_1,g_2)$.

This amounts to the vanishing of $H^2$ in the complex $C^\bullet_\gamma$ of continuous cochains: $C^t_\gamma:=\Map(G^{t}, V_\gamma)$ (where the differential uses the action $\ad\gamma\colon G\to\mathrm{Aut}(V)$). The vanishing is because $G$ is compact, so we can "average" over Haar measure to turn a non-equivariant contracting homotopy on $D^\bullet_\gamma=\Map(G^{\bullet+1}, V_\gamma)$ into a contracting homotopy on $C^\bullet_\gamma = (D^\bullet_\gamma)^G$.

Given this, since both $C^1$ and $Z^1_\gamma$ are contractible groups, (in fact, $Z^1_\gamma=V/V^{\gamma(G)}$ by $H^1=0$), we should have that $C^1\times_{Z^1_\gamma} E^0_\gamma$ is weakly equivalent to $E^0_\gamma$.

Note: in the case that $\Pi$ is abelian, we simply get a homeomorphism $C^1\times E^0\approx E$.

Charles Rezk
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