Thursday, 10 January 2008

at.algebraic topology - Geometric model for classifying spaces of alternating groups

Probably the right thing to do is to express the classifying space of $A_n$ as the non-trivial double cover of the classifying space of $S_n$. A point in the classifying space is then a set of $n$ points in $mathbb{R}^infty$ with a "sign ordering". A sign ordering is an equivalence class of orderings of the points, i.e., ways to number them from 1 to $n$, up to even permutations. I coined the term "sign ordering" by analogy with a cyclic ordering. But that name aside, the idea comes up all the time in various guises. For instance an orientation of a simplex is by definition a sign ordering of its vertices.



This is in the same vein as your other examples and you can of course do something similar with any subgroup $G subseteq S_n$. You can always choose an ordering of the points up to relabeling by an element of $G$.




A bit more whimsically, you could call the configuration space of $n$ sign-ordered points in a manifold "the configuration space of $n$ fermions". Although a stricter model of the $n$ fermions is the local system or flat line bundle on $n$ unordered points, in which the holonomy negates the fiber when it induces an odd permutation of the points. This local system is similar to the sign-ordered space in the sense that the sign-ordered space is the associated principal bundle with structure group $C_2$.

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