We define an extension of the nth homotopy group which can distinguish a larger class of spaces. (E.g., a converging sequence of disjoint circles and the disjoint union of countably many circles, which have isomorphic fundamental groups, regardless of choice of basepoint.) We do this by introducing a generalization of homotopies, called component-homotopies, and defining the nth extended homotopy group to be the set of component-homotopy classes of maps from compact subsets of (0,1)n into a space, with a concatenation operation. We also introduce a method of tree-adjoinment for "connecting" disconnected metric spaces and show how this method can be used to calculate the extended homotopy groups of an arbitrary metric space.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-7757 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Creators | Larsen, Nicholas Guy |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | All Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
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